Afghanistan produces ninety percent of the world’s heroin. The illegal drug accounts for about half the country’s gross domestic product. The Canadian and U.S. governments, along with major media, say the Taliban controls this drug trade. The reality is quite different, as investigative journalist Reese Erlich reports from Jalalabad, near the Pakistan border.
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In the 1940s and 50s, journalist Tom Patterson became convinced that Shakespeare could help revitalize his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. Today, Suchitoto, El Salvador hopes to begin a culturally-driven economic revitalization that will build on Tom Patterson’s legacy through a novel partnership with Stratford.
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Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley has produced wine for over four thousand years. That winemaking tradition continues today, with Lebanon boasting some world-class reds. But wine making isn’t easy in Lebanon. Vintners have had to deal with fundamentalists, civil war, and invading armies. The struggle has been worth it. Reese Erlich reports from the Bekaa Valley.
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Southern Lebanese farmers are caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, their land has been a battleground and Israeli cluster bombs continue to pollute their fields. On the other hand, they’ve been abandoned by Lebanon’s political elite – many of them merchants – who prefer to see Lebanon import its food. A guy named Rami is helping them out.
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It’s hard to imagine a development tool more powerful than a radio station, owned and operated by a community. For the past few years, a little radio station called FADECO has been promoting rural development in the community of Karagwe, in northwest Tanzania.
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In this final chapter in our series, Christine Hamilton and I head off to a fishing settlement called Lushonga, in search of a woman named Josie, who suffers from an advanced case of AIDS.
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Rural-urban migration is a twentieth century phenomenon. Faced by numerous obstacles, poor farmers have always set off to the nearest big city in search of income. Opportunities are often a dream. Families break up, violence, alcoholism, and drug abuse are rampant … racism and discrimination too. In the end, migrants often forsake their most valuable card – their own traditions. GPM correspondent Jen Moore sends us this story, from the margins of a large Bolivian city.
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What happens when a refugee camp turns into a permanent community? Buduburam — home to hundreds of Liberians — is one such human settlement in the Ghanean capital of Accra.
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The third in a series of voicescapes from a visit to Bumbire Island, in Southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania … Dale Hamilton and I travel to nearby Kinagi Island to visit a big fishing camp.
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Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, in Tanzania, East Africa. Nature on and around Bumbire is gorgeous—but the hardscrabble fishing camps scattered along its shores—and those of nearby rocky islets—are a different story.
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Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania, East Africa. The islands are gorgeous—and strangely reminiscent of Newfoundland or similar maritime landscapes. But the hardscrabble fishing camps scattered across Bumbire and neighboring rocky islets are a different story. A mix of settled and transient fishermen [...]
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Here’s another dispatch from Victoria Fenner, who spent an action and learning-filled three weeks in Central America earlier in the year. It’s hard to visit Central America and not explore the world of coffee, so here we go.
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If everyone on Earth earned what their labour was actually worth, global poverty would be a lot less rampant. Paying people what their labour is worth is what the so-called Fair Trade movement is all about. Victoria Fenner sends us philosophical musings on the subject from Guatemala about the personal ramifications of free trading.
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Of all the conflicts in Latin America, none was more brutal or costly in human lives than the forty-year civil war in Guatemala. Two hundred thousand people died, most of them impoverished peasants of Mayan ancestry. Today, former rebels are presenting their perspective of the struggle–to tourists.
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The slow-food movement has reached dizzying heights on the sun-baked altiplano of Bolivia, in the Andean highlands. Here, small-scale producers are making the most of scarce water supplies, ample sun, a few inexpensive materials and local expertise to eke out a living in some of the highest elevation farmland in the world.
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Here’s a dispatch we’ve received from the Tanzanian capital of Dar Es Salaam – City of Peace – a metropolis known for its astonishing traffic jams. Urban planners in Dar are working on a new mass transit system, that will hopefully make everyone’s lives and workday much more peaceful … in theory. Josephat Mwanzi reports.
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Twenty-four hours in Zanzibar. What’s a person to do? Following up on a contact, I go visit the Dhow Countries Music Academy … and am amazed.
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Three quarters of Earth’s surface is covered in water. Most of this vast mass of water is salty, a mere two percent or so fit to drink. Underground is where the planet’s purest waters lie. You’d think we’d conserve what’s so scarce and valuable. It isn’t always so. Bolivians are working hard to better manage their water – as Jen Moore reports.
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Stuart Franklin is turning air miles into trees. Franklin — the founder of a grassroots carbon offsetting project in Ecuador — calculates how many seedlings he has to put in the ground in order to generate a carbon bank big enough to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by tourists jetting to the popular Galapagos Islands each year.
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The city of Curitiba, in southern Brazil, is famous among urban planners for its innovation and rational development, with a reputation for being highly livable and very sustainable. It was one of the first cities to market itself as “green” in a 1980s advertising campaign. And it is.
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Israeli activist Jeff Halper came to Winnipeg at the end of January to speak about the current situation in Palestine-Israel, and about the work of the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions. Temperatures outside plunged to almost minus forty. Inside the atmosphere was congenial — but Jeff had disturbing news to share.
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They’re scrubby, fierce with mosquitoes and impossible to walk through, but salt water mangroves are the guardians of Earth’s tropical coastlines and nurseries for her fish. Coastal mangroves are endangered by unsustainable fishing and cutting practices. The mangroves of southern Cambodia, on the Gulf of Thailand, are a case in point.
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Farmers and their cash crops … earning a living on the margins of global agriculture. Palestinian farmers face an entirely unique challenge. Israel’s so-called “Security Barrier” has actually walled them off from their olive and vegetable groves. The Annexation Wall – as Palestinians call it – prevents them from farming completely.
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Rwanda … Land of a Thousand Hills, in east-central Africa. Fourteen years after the awful 100-day genocide, Rwandans grow rice, bananas, tea and coffee as they have for generations. On one mountainside, villagers are earning extra money processing their own coffee beans — thanks to a fellow Rwandan educated in Canada.
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The next time you buy roses for your honey, consider this: The cut flowers in your Valentine’s bouquet were fumigated for insects and mildew, then drenched with preservatives for the long flight north. They may only make your lover sneeze – or perhaps break out in a rash – but the farmers who grow the flowers may suffer chronic poisoning. GPM producer Jen Moore sends us this report from Ecuador, a major exporter of cut flowers.
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Think about threatened waters and their wildlife … what comes to mind? Whales … declining codfish stocks … bleached coral reefs. In the U.S. Territory of Puerto Rico, tiny, luminescent creatures are taking it on the chin. Chemical and light pollution threaten to quench their bioluminescence.
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In the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains – in northern India – a very energetic woman has declared that seeds should also be free! Her name is Vandana Shiva, and she’s a tireless defender of farmers rights. GPM producer Dave Kattenburg caught up with Vandana Shiva at her biodiversity farm north just outside Dehradun. Click on read more, then on the audio button beneath her photo to hear their conversation.
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Few industries provoke as much controversy as mining. When powerful companies seek out concessions in poor countries, communities rally around democratic institutions to defend their land and water. From the Andean mountains of Peru, Jen Moore brings us this story about how a democratic vote saved the day … perhaps.
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Isabel La Torre knew they’d finally hit upon the right idea when women’s participation in the Central Coffee Organization of Northwestern Peru (CECANOR) more than doubled in less than three years. For more than three decades, this vibrant Peruvian coffee marketer has been interested in addressing gender inequity on the farm. But after various attempts, putting a dollar value on women’s work is what has made a difference.
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Mumbai … the world’s third most populous city. This little neck of land dangling in the Arabian Sea is a Mecca for India’s corporate giants. Real estate prices have skyrocketed. But almost half of Mumbai’s eighteen million residents are poor and the real estate crunch is squeezing them out. Nowhere is the clash between global real estate forces and traditional residents more evident than in Asia’s “largest slum”: Dharavi
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