Don't Save the World - satire by Deek Jackson

Warning: Brit satirist guarantees to offend all rulers of the world. He uses vulgar language to describe crimes against humanity. Some well-meaning folk will urge that the language be censored. Mmmmf!

See also his homepage deekjackson.com/ and radio interview.
Thanks to Lucky Nelson in Paris for suggesting this item.

“Rural reality radio” covers climate change in India -- by Shravya Reddy

photo © 2008 Flickr/Russ Bowling CC CC BY 2.0

Cross-posted from climaterealityproject.org 27 Dec 2011.  
  As we work to build a global climate movement, we often rely on the latest technologies to get the word out fast. Case in point: In September, the Climate Reality Project’s worldwide event – 24 Hours of Reality – reached people instantly in their living rooms via the Internet. But of course, billions of people are not connected to the Internet, and many don’t even have electricity. To reach such audiences, radio is often the best means of mass communication.

Recognizing this, an environmental organization in India has taken to the airwaves to help rural communities prepare for the impacts of climate change – using the format of a reality show competition! Development Alternatives – also known as DevAlt – has rolled out a program called the “Rural Reality Radio Show on Climate Adaptation” (PDF).

To find out more about this, I had a really exciting chat with Zeenat Niazi and Vijay Chaturvedi, both Senior Program Directors at DevAlt [photo at right]. Over the past year, in over 100 villages in India’s Bundelkhand region, they’ve worked with groups of women who have been exposed to impacts of climate change like prolonged drought. These women were encouraged to devise special projects to help prepare for climate impacts, and were given airtime to discuss their projects on local community radio stations in a reality show format. Their projects – designed and implemented entirely by the women themselves – range from improved farming techniques to vermicomposting (using worms to turn waste into compost). The “contestants” were then shortlisted, and are up for winning a grand prize. One of the coolest features is that the judges are their fellow villagers who have been listening to the radio shows all along. Voting will start next month, and I’m already curious to find out who the winner will be!

This program was funded through a World Bank award, and its objective is to help rural communities change some of their traditions and practices in response to a changing climate. The program also aims to prove that simple measures can reduce climate risk.
By the looks of it, the initiative has already started changing attitudes toward climate preparedness. As Ms. Niazi told me, “when we see farmers switch from wheat to barley for their winter crop for the first time in decades, we know that the message is sinking in, and they know they have to be ready for change.” On a hunch that I may not have had much experience with farming (a very good hunch!), Mr. Chaturvedi clarified: “Barley requires much less water than wheat, and water availability has been dwindling in the region.”

DevAlt isn’t working solely on responding to climate change. They have a whole slew of projects that prevent carbon pollution in the first place. These low-carbon growth projects fall under the umbrella of their “Shubh Kal” initiative (which means an “auspicious tomorrow”). Ms. Niazi explained that even though these villagers have a negligible carbon footprint, her group still felt it was “important to demonstrate that they can lead by example,” and prove that communities can improve livelihoods while reducing carbon pollution.

An example of a Shubh Kal project is the building of greener brick kilns that reduce carbon pollution by up to 50%. A second example is the distribution of “carbon cards”, which contain a village’s carbon footprint as well as the amount of carbon prevented from entering the atmosphere though tree planting, forest maintenance and soil conservation measures. Periodically, the village’s performance in lowering its footprint is measured and recorded on these cards.

I couldn’t agree with Ms. Niazi more when she exclaimed: “These communities are showing others that they don’t have to repeat the same mistakes the rest of the world made, and can achieve prosperity without following the old model.” Three cheers to that! Now if only others – in the developed and developing world — figured this out too, and realized that economic growth can be achieved in a low-carbon manner. Hmm … Perhaps I need to get myself on a reality radio show soon and start spreading the word!

What do you think about this approach of showcasing communities’ climate preparedness efforts through radio programs? Would you listen to such a show, or even participate in a show like this in your community? If so, do pitch it to your local radio station. We’d love to hear what you think!

Singing to change the world

Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart larger.” - Ben Okri, Nigerian author.

“Africans have this thing called ‘ubuntu’. We believe that a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is bound up, inextricably, with yours. - Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, member of The Elders.

Map by nordpil.com from The Environmental Food Crisis (UNEP, 2009)

Artists, writers and musicians can help change the world!  

For COP-17 at Durban, a coalition of ecojustice NGOs in Moving-Planet.org launched a "RadioWave" campaign. They urge that you contact local radio stations (tips on how to get air plays, and report successes) to play the song “People Power” and related podcasts. The song calls us to action — using people power to change the world and create a brighter future.

Lyrics of “People Power” by singers Marie Daulne (Congo), Angelique Kidjo (Benin), Talib Kweli (USA), Ahmed Soultan (Morocco), Jabulani Tsambo and Zolani Mahola (S.Africa); instrumentalists are Yaw Asumadu – djembe, dondo, kpanlogo drums (Ghana); Tinotenda Dambaneunga – drums (South Africa); Hassan Erraji – oud, darabuka, bendir (Morocco); Sonah Jobarteh – kora (Gambia/U.K.); bra Themba Mokoena – guitar (South Africa); Korey Riker – tenor sax, baritone sax (U.S.); Gama Sibeko – percussion (South Africa); Ahmed Soultan – Rik, Derbuka, Tarra and clap (Morocco); Anthony Tidd – guitar, bass, keyboard (U.S.); Steve Tirpak – trombone, trumpet (U.S.).

Angelique Kidjo (singing in Fon, the language of Benin)

Let’s get together


Let’s all get involved


In changing the world

...

Talib Kweli (American hip-hop)

Everybody wanna be a gangster
 
Wavin their flag for the set they claim
 
democrat, republican, crip or blood you can switch it up, really it’s all the same
 
Just corrupted agendas, public offenders, they ain’t come to defend us
, Government is against us, workin’ for corporate interests, we’ve been hoodwinked.
 
They walkin’ all over you with carbon footprints

But look man we gotta find common ground, a common theme on which we gotta agree
 
We need the sea, we need the trees, we need the air, we got to breathe
 
fossil fuels got us livin' like dinosaurs, eatin' up the resources like carnivores
 
What we need is a new energy solution, for mother nature is not the enemy.

CHORUS


Turn it around


Drilling for energy, like you cannot see the Sun


Iphendule [‘turn it around’ in isiZulu ]


This earth belongs to everyone


Turn it around


Mining for energy, like you’ve never felt the wind


Iphendule [‘turn it around’ in isiZulu ]


Time to change so we can live

HOOK CHORUS in isiZulu
 [in English]

Jika Turn


Umhlabawethu This world is our world


Jika Turn


Masihlangane Let’s get together


Jika Turn


Umoya wethu This is our spirit


Jika Turn


Simuntumunye We are one or none

Download the song and additional podcasts here.

Moving-Planet comments: "Africa is the continent that is most vulnerable to climate change (according to the recent Maplecroft report, of the world’s most highly vulnerable countries, approximately two-thirds are located in Africa). These impacts include more severe droughts, increasing deserts, worsening storms that damage people’s croplands, and sea level rise affecting the coastal communities.  People in the Eastern Horn of Africa are already being forced off their homelands due to the drought and famine made worse by climate change. The African continent also has a rich history and recent past of fighting injustice, of creativity, of perseverance, of communal caring, and of traditional wisdom of living in harmony with nature. And it is the birthplace of humanity – all people, the world over, carry memories of Africa in their cells."

“Global warming is set to make many of the problems which Africa already deals with, much, much worse. …The great tragedy is that Africa has played virtually no role in global warming, a problem caused by economic activity of the rich, industrial countries.” - Andrew Simms, New Economics Foundation

If developers ruled the world -- NFB Citizenshift

Cartoon by Anthony Piraino, Greensboro NC - see his blog
click on cartoon for clearer view


Sprawl (13m 42 s, NFB 2009)
by Montreal actress, journalist and videographer Tamar Kozlov
Two views of Montreal: Dr. David Suzuki at a 2009 youth conference held by C-Vert, an environmental program for youths founded by Stephen Bronfman. They speak about urban sprawl, the dangers of meddling with natural systems (e.g. GMOs) and the state of the planet. David Côté and his chef Chris Eschleman launch Crudessence, a raw / living food restaurant, and speak of a younger generation's hopes of greening the city.
*****
See previous post on results of urban sprawl in Duncan BC.
Other Citizenshift videos and podcasts at http://citizenshift.ca/categories/environment
En français http://parolecitoyenne.org/categories/environnement

Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent -- by Andew Nikiforuk

Did you know the tarsands now are 20% of US oil supply? That Canada has displaced Saudi Arabia? Why are critics ignored, censored or fired? What can ordinary citizens do? Veteran environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk tells about its environmental impacts and Canadian governments' role.

The frenzied development ($100 billion and counting) of the oil sands in Fort McMurray, Alberta, in the last six years has made Canada the world’s fifth greatest global exporter of oil and turned the country into “an emerging energy superpower.”

Combining extensive scientific research and compelling writing, Andrew Nikiforuk takes the reader to Fort McMurray, home to some of the world’s largest open-pit mines, and explores this twenty-first-century pioneer town from the exorbitant cost of housing to its more serious social ills. He uncovers a global Deadwood, complete with rapturous engineers, cut-throat cocaine dealers, aimless bush workers, American evangelicals, and the largest population of homeless people in northern Canada. Tarsands production:

• burns more carbon than conventional oil,
• destroys forests and displaces woodland caribou,
• poisons the water supply and communities downstream,
• drains the Athabasca, the river that feeds Canada’s largest watershed, and
• contributes to climate change.

The book does provide hope, however, and ends with an exploration of possible solutions to the problem.

"The Alberta tar sands are a cesspool of pollution. Nikiforuk’s elegantly written book delivers all the gory details about toxic lakes, heat-trapping greenhouse gases, and the fiction of reclamation. Tar Sands also reveals how Canada’s new status as a petrostate has jeopardized its democracy. His 12 steps to energy sanity should be required reading for every citizen."-- Georgia Straight

"Award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk explores why, while the world is going green, Canada is going black in Tar Sands, which includes a fascinating look at Fort McMurray’s black-gold rush town, often lawless and corrupt." -- Canadian Bookseller

"Required reading for the President in preparation for his first foreign trop is the book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent, by Andrew Nikiforuk, which was published to wide acclaim in Canada in the fall… It details the impact [of]... the world’s largest energy project and one of its dirtiest and most dangerous. In anticipation of Obama’s visit, Prime Minister Harper told the press: ‘To be frank on the oil sands, we’ve got to do a better job environmentally.’ Read Nikiforuk’s book and you’ll see why Harper’s comment has already won the award for Biggest Understatement of 2009." --Huffington Post

"Investigative journalist and national treasure Andrew Nikiforuk documents the exorbitant economic, social and environmental costs of building Alberta’s Tar Sands." -- Maisonneuve

"Nikiforuk believes the tar sands should be developed gradually and with far greater environmental sensitivity… Nikiforuk paints a picture of the current development as an environmental cesspool. In fact… the tar sands are Canada’s single largest growing source of carbon dioxide, and by 2020 will account for no less than 16% of the nation’s total emissions." -- Regina Leader-Post

“[Tar Sands] provides an excellent guide to all of the environmental repercussions of our oil dependency. The political analysis is also good, sounding a warning about our dangerous energy 'interdependence' with the declining American empire…” -- Quill & Quire

"It’s an important book, one that every Canadian should read to find out how the world’s largest energy project will affect us." -- David Suzuki Foundation

"If you want to be scared, you don’t need to watch a horror movie or read the latest Stephen King bestseller. Real terror can be found by simply firing up Google Earth… [where] you can see what Alberta's tar sands look like from space. It’s not a pretty sight… A recent book by celebrated journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands… explores what these grey spots on Google Earth mean to Canada’s environment and economy. It’s an important book, one that every Canadian should read to find out how the worlds largest energy project will affect us." -- Georgia Straight

"In his recent book Tar Sands… Nikiforuk lands a knockout blow on the kissers of the oil industry, oil-friendly bureaucrats, and petrol-guzzling North Americans. It is obvious that this Canadian is sick and tired of watching his own beloved habitat mutate from a pristine Northern ecosystem to a veritable toxic wasteland. …His book combines intensive research with a lively, caustic writing style… sort of enlightened invective. This makes for an astonishingly entertaining read that raises your hackles while raising your awareness about a seriously dangerous issue. …With Nikiforuk barking and biting at the heels of the oiligarchs stomping around his home turf, every Canadian and American will have little difficulty recognizing that bitumen is far too dirty to have a place in the future of our continent." -- Sustainablog

"Nikiforuk …took pains to ensure his book went beyond preaching to the converted. Tar Sands begins with a bluntly worded 22-point ‘declaration of a political emergency’ and ends with a 12-step plan to regain ‘energy sanity,’ which includes action the general reader can take. In between, Nikiforuk writes not only about environmental and political concerns, but takes the reader into the frenzied boom of Fort McMurray and along the so-called ‘highway to hell’ that leads to it."-- Calgary Herald

See also the feature documentary H2Oil (2009); National Geographic March 2009 on the tarsands: Scraping Bottom and interviews with Albertans of all stripes in the video Shifting Sand; Dominionpaper.ca download special issue on tarsands (Oct 2009); Dogwood Initiative about Haida opposition to tarsands-Kitimat pipeline-tankers to China; Andrew Nikiforuk, Tar Sands (2009) order pb or ebook; James Hoggan, Climate Cover-Up (2009) about oil industry funding -- $millions -- to climate change deniers.

Birds, songs and sources

These waxbill finches were among several photos of birds just posted by Haole in DailyKos. The adult's brilliant beak is exactly the colour of sealing wax. Apparently the lower ones are juveniles. Like many other species in Hawaii, they may have been introduced. This adaptable tropical bird has spread around the world, often escaping from cages. They also line their nests with predator scat to keep enemies away. Bird brains are smarter than we think.

See also E-bird for US sightings of the common waxbill, its song on Xeno-Canto: bird songs from the Americas; other DailyKos bird pix from lineatus in San Francisco and juliewolf in New England. Birdlife State of the World's Birds (2008) reports one in eight wild bird species is threatened with global extinction, with 190 species now critically endangered. The trend is worsening, according to the IUCN's Red List.

Human Activity - a jazz suite on climate change by Brad Shepik

Human Activity premiere June 2008 at 55 Bar, New York: photo Scott Friedlander. Left to right:
Gary Versace* (piano, accordion), Drew Gress (Bass), Ralph Alessi (trumpet), Tom Rainey* (drums), Brad Shepik* (guitar).
Jazz guitarist Brad Shepik composed and plays Human Activity: Sounding a Response to Climate Change which will be released on CD in Feb 2009.The 90-minute 10-part suite, commissioned by Chamber Music America, ranges musical cultures from the rough-edged "Blindspot (North America), to a lament for Antarctica, the arabesque "Waves (Asia)," and the Latin rhythms of South America (e.g. listen to "Lima" online).

One of the leaders of ethnojazz with its echoes of klezmer, Balkan and Turkish themes, he has played and recorded with jazz greats Carla Bley, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian; as well as various Seattle groups, Bulgarian Wedding Band, Quantara, Tridurga, Babkas and his own Trio*.

In an interview with Franz Matzner, Shepik says he based the suite on life experience, reading Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Alan Weisman's The World Without Us, as well as David Quammen and Edward Hoagland, and deep research in folk, world and indigenous music. A genuine jazz improvisation, a cry for action, a warning, an elegy, his Human Activity "focuses on how these issues affect us as people living on the earth" not just in the USA. "There is a piece for each of the seven continents and [for other] factors of climate change such as carbon, desertification, the warming of the oceans, the changing currents."

"I grew up outside of Seattle and spent a lot of time hiking, camping and fly fishing, also skiing in the Cascades as a kid and a young adult when I lived in Seattle. We would also sail through the San Juan and Gulf Islands every summer on my Dad's boat... in and around the subdivision where I grew up there were woods and creeks where we played. Most of that has been developed... rampant development, which led to more cars, traffic congestion and pollution... [and a] huge drop in the salmon population in Puget Sound.

"This spring I visited the Grand Canyon and Monument Valley which made a huge impression on me..the time that it took to create those things and the forces that created them... [I saw] an outdoor exhibit in Paris: the history of earth [in] a half a kilometer walk of 200 year old trees...There were 6 billion years represented there and the appearance of humans was only the last 20 feet..." (full text on All About Jazz)

Deconstructing Dinner: heritage plants, biodiversity and slow food

Slow Food USA poster from Creative DC .

Kootenay Coop Radio in BC has produced a series of podcasts on Michael Pollan's Ominivore's Dilemma; Judy Alexander on rainwater irrigation; environmental impact of pesticides; a local CSA and its plans to improve school meals; organic farming, food politics and food sovereignty; agribusiness, GMOs and nutrition; Dan Jason's Seed and Plant Sanctuary for Canada to preserve heritage plants.

KCR also provides links to videos of Wendell Berry, Judy Alexander, Michael Pollan, and Dan Jason's Gardens of Destiny. Thanks to Bill Curry of Saskatchewan for this alert.

For in-depth information on these concerns see other food posts in this blog, Slow Food International, Wikipedia on slow food, Community-Supported Agriculture, food sovereignty and food security; the ETC Group, and the QIAP book The Future Control of Food (2008). Read personal stories by US farmers at The Land Institute, DailyKos blogs on food issues and Mark Wynne's Closing the Food Gap: Resetting the Table in the Land of Plenty

A Village in Guatemala

NACLA photo: General Perez Molina of the "Patriot Party” whose motto is La Mano Dura.
[ Editor's note: We have received permission to tell this story. During the 1960-96 genocide at least 200,000 people, mostly Mayan campesinos, were disappeared or openly massacred by Guatemalan forces under officers trained in the infamous School of the Americas, Ft Benning GA. No one has ever been brought to justice. Bishop Gerardi was assassinated in 1998 for publishing a church report on the genocide, Guatemala: Nunca Más. Since then, the US and Canada (and investors) have turned a blind eye to the military’s narcotic trading and an alarming rise in street violence. Last year, aided by political beatings and assassinations, one of the genocidal generals, Perez Molina, came within two seats of forming the government. A tiny 3% elite descended from the conquistadores control 70% of the land. The rest are desperately poor. Mayans are still struggling for language and education rights, access to land, a decent standard of living, and freedom from military terror. More than half of Guatemala's population, they average less than half the Ladino income; 900,000 children work as labourers; 45% attend school. Average life expectancy is 20 years. -- See references at the end.]

A Village in Guatemala, by Nathalie Sorenson

Santa María Tzejá, March 2004

I was one of 14 Canadians on a social justice study tour of Guatemala. Santa María Tzejá is a 9 hour drive from the capital. The road took us through brilliant green fields, groves of tall tropical trees hung with vines, here and there, high mountain ranges, banana plants in the deep ravines, their wide leaves shining in the afternoon light, and native people’s small plantations of corn far up the slopes. In the final 4 hours, we pass through a couple of villages and an army base, but mostly this region is wild and green and empty. The dirt road is so bad that our vans slow to a few miles an hour as they bump through pot holes more than a foot deep. The road is unsafe after nightfall, the time of killers and kidnappers. Welcome to Guatemala….

We reach Santa María in darkness, and in the home of Randall Shea (an American volunteer who stayed and married into the Mayan community) we are served a delicious meal of chicken, fresh green squash, black bean paste, and tortillas by candlelight.

Next morning we seek out a village elder, Bartolo. We follow a footpath into a grove of trees, the sun dappling the warm green gloom. By the side of the path, a young girl is lying in a hammock reading. It is the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Mayans. The path widens into a cattle trail leading to Bartolo’s modest one-room home, and he comes out to greet us, a man in his seventies with great personal dignity, former president of the village agricultural co-operative, father of eight children.

Bartolo’s story

He tells us the village was carved out of the jungle in the 1960s [presumably to escape rapacious landlords in the valleys]. He takes us up a steep jungle path. We are surrounded by unseen activity in the leaves and vines. Birds call overhead. At the top of a rise he shows us a stand of cardamom below, ten feet high with palm-like fronds and small oval green fruit. He picks a large handful, offers them to us, a gift of the country. Continuing uphill, we pass a fenced pasture where twenty Brahmin cattle are grazing. He is immensely proud of his healthy herd… the pleasure of ownership. His land totals 20 hectares. Further still, we come to the milpas, small plantations of corn, the native staple… then a grove from which palm hearts are harvested, and his vanilla plants, twined around small trees for support. The view opens to distant mountains. A hawk wheels slowly. As we rest, Bartolo tells us a story. He points to an area of jungle just below the hill…

“That is where we fled and hid after the attack in 1982,” he says. The mind’s eye sees terrified villagers running for their lives in the tangled underbrush of the jungle. On February 13, 1982, the Guatemalan army, in helicopters and on foot, stormed the village. Houses and crops were burned and the animals slaughtered. Over the next five days, they caught and killed seventeen people, most of them women and children. Who lived and died was quite arbitrary. A 13 year old said she would carry her little sister;. “No, just run as fast as you can,” said the mother; she heard gunfire from the direction where the girl had run, and then found her daughter dead. Manual Canil left his mother, wife, six children and members of their extended family hidden in a small ravine while he looked for a safer location. While he was gone, a dog barked. Only Manuel’s five year old son escaped. Hidden behind a bush, he saw nine others machine-gunned, or executed with a shot in the head.

The refugees

Fierce storms lashed the survivors. Some hid in the Ixcán jungle for a month… They were starving: leftover corn in the milpas, roots and wild fruit, cooked after dark. Malaria was common… they made ancient herbal medicines. Eventually about half the villagers left for Mexico… Single young men took positions in front and back of the line. They scouted the safest route and kept watch for the army. Families with small children stayed in the middle. Bartolo’s family were among those who fled.

In Chiapas, the refugee campesinos were greeted with open arms by fellow Mayans. COMAR (Mexican Commission for Help with Refugees) was the channel of United Nations and NGO aid. 200,000 Guatemalans had fled from hundreds of such massacres. 46,000 were in official refugee camps. Those from Santa María stayed for twelve years… Community cooperatives and stores were set up and some young people were able to study agronomy, livestock management, carpentry, mechanics and education. Others formed groups to study their human rights, as well as the history and constitution of Guatemala. Three of Bartolo’s daughters married Mexican farmers and are still in Chiapas. With a gift of 6 cattle to start his herd, they helped their father re-establish himself in Santa María. Mexico, generous as it was, was still exile.

The witnesses

Now it is evening. We are waiting for the witnesses of Santa María. They are relatives of those in who died in the February massacre. Together with people from twenty-two other communities, they brought class-action lawsuits against the generals who directed the genocide, Lucas Garcia and Rios Montt, for crimes against humanity. Each in turn, tells us the name of a mother, sons and daughters, brothers who were killed. They thank us for coming.

As they speak, the tropical night comes swiftly. A full moon rises, serene and bright. A bird calls: poor-will, southern relative of the whip-poor-will.

Pablo (not his real name) tells of the unmarked graves they found on their return in May 1994. “We carried out exhumations and were able to give a few of our loved ones proper burials… sadly the remains of most were not found. Then we began to think about legal charges. The process is very slow. This is the first case of its kind in Guatemala. People are afraid, as the accused have political and economic power.”.

Marco talks about the annual day of commemoration. “The names of each victim, with the dates and places of death were embroidered on pieces of cloth. These small pieces were sewn together into a banner. Each community, San Marcos, Quiche, Coban, -- all of them – made a similar banner and on February 25, 2004 we all marched in the capital with our banners. Many other people from the capital joined us. We were all shouting for justice. We went around several blocks and when we arrived at the Congress, we put the banners down on the ground. The Vice-President and two representatives came out… at the National Palace, the President himself came out…He said that the government was responsible for the violence and asked for pardon of those present. People felt hope…Past governments have never admitted responsibility.“

He thanks us… “It motivates us to know people care…May you go on informing others so there will be other protests, so this will never happen again.”

Farewell

I last saw Bartolo in the community hall. Teenagers from the school performed a traditional Mayan folk dance: girls in handwoven skirts and blouses, boys in white shirts, straw hats and colourful sashes. Then a young man with a guitar sang in honour of the fallen. In his warm sweet voice was pain, strength, and ultimately love. “Santa María,” went the chorus, “Santa María.” I glanced at Bartolo. He was not smiling, but what I think I saw in his face was quiet pride, and hope for the future.

References

US aid and news: Despues de las Guerras / Central America After the Wars with witness podcasts and links, San Carlos Foundation, Cimientos de Educacion / Foundations of Education, BringLight, Village Earth, Oxfam America Investing in Destruction, death threats to environmentalists and US anti-fair trade; NACLA: North American Congress on Latin America, Narconews, NISGUA, Rights Action (ex Guatemala Partners) reports, Angus Reid Global Monitor, Derechos / Human Rights file on School of the Americas
See also postings in this blog: Enviados con gozo, Mayan rural projects

Canadian aid and news: Breaking the Silence Network, Atlantic Region Solidarity Network, Pueblo Partisans, Presbyterian Church Making Connection, InnovativeCommunities.org video on Mayan weaving cooperative and AT stoves in San Antonio Palopo.

UK aid and news: Conciliation Resources, New Agriculturalist, Friends of the Earth

Latin American history: Eduardo Galeano, Memoria del Fuego (trilogy 1982-86), translated into English as Memory of Fire I. Genesis, II. Faces and Masks, III. Century of the Wind; Chicago Religious Task Force on Central America, Dangerous Memories (AFSC/Popular University Press 1991). Guatemalan history: The Art of Political Murder reviewed in International Herald Tribune 27 Sep 07.

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