In the summer of 2014, several hundred people gathered at a fracking “Day of Protest” in Kent County, between Moncton and Miramichi — Elsipogtog First Nations territory.
Winnipeg’s Social Enterprise Center builds community in the north end of Prairie Canada’s capital — from the inside out.
Tanzania was applauded for attaining its UN Millennium Development Goal on universal education four years in advance of the 2015 deadline it had set for itself. But in this rural east African nation, enormous challenges remain.
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Universities are engines of higher learning – also of national development and prosperity. No one knows this better than Israel – home to some of the world’s most prestigious universities. Palestinian schools struggle under Israeli occupation.
Until recently, Rwandan farmers knew when the rains would come; when best to plant their crops. These days, with varying weather patterns attributed to climate change, more and more Rwandan farmers struggle to grow food.
For those who speak and write non-Latin languages, being able to type on a ‘standard’ computer keyboard is a major barrier to digital democracy. In Cambodia, this problem has been solved and communities are going wireless.
When it comes to garbage, it’s a matter of perspective. One person’s trash is another person’s cash. Outside of Kigali, in the east African nation of Rwanda, villagers have figured out how to turn food waste into cooking fuel.
A few of the remarkable faces captured (along with audio) on last August/September’s trip to Palestine/Israel. Speaking with folks like these, it’s hard not to feel optimistic about the future of Israel as a nation of its citizens.
Food is wonderful. A delight to be eaten as well as to behold. At this festive time of year, feast your eyes on some of the tastiest foods and beverages Palestinians and Israelis have to offer.
Weekly peaceful protests in villages across the West Bank are routinely greeted by Israeli teargas, sewage water, concussion grenades, and the occasional burst of live rounds. The village of Bi’lin is one of these.
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Amira Hass is a columnist for the left-center Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. For over twenty years, her hard-hitting reports from the West Bank have shone a light on Israel’s occupation.
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Jeff Halper, a native of Hibbing, Minnesota, is the founder of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions.
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According to Mahatma Gandhi, nothing poses more of a threat to an oppressive regime than well organized, non-violent resistance. Mubarak Awad — some call him the Palestinian Gandhi — is a case in point.
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Mustafa Barghouti is a Palestinian politician and democracy activist. He and I sat down for an interview in August 2012 in his office on the outskirts of Ramallah.
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The largest of Israel’s hundred or so checkpoints, Qualandia — between northern Jerusalem and the road to Ramallah — is a masterpiece in population engineering. Israeli Machsom Watch activists keep an eye on what happens there.
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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.
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For more than three decades, the Central Coffee Organization of Northwestern Peru has addressed gender inequity on the farm. Putting a dollar value on women’s work is what has made a difference.
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Small farmers in the hills of Honduras are improving their lives through seed saving and on-farm experimentation. Jen Moore reports.
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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. They’re also threatened.
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Dar es Salaam … City of Peace on Tanzania’s Indian Ocean coast. Driving a car into, out of or around the city, or commuting in one of the Tanzanian capital’s jam-packed dala-dalas, is anything but a peaceful enterprise.
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It’s easy to forget – living in the middle of a continent – that there are limits to the amount of dross we can toss. But when you’re living on an island, in the middle of the ocean, trash can get in your face
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A dozen Cambridge Bay muskox hunters go hi-tech, courtesy of Nunavut’s Wildlife Management Board. It’s all part of monitoring study aimed at conserving tundra species for future generations.
For all the damage they’ve inflicted on their one and only home, many human beings reflect on where they’ve gone wrong, and the major changes they’ll have to embrace in order to survive. Here are a few voices we’ve managed to capture.
A former senior justice official of Earth’s most powerful nation vents his rage at the war machine his country has become.
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Jewish settlers in the Palestinian city of Hebron wear skull caps and carry Glock pistols. They have forcibly expanded their settlements, closed Palestinian shops, and expelled residents.
If there’s any hope for the human species, it draws sustenance from the collective wisdom of Planet Earth’s indigenous people. In their struggle, Earth’s future lies.
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Human beings can’t decide how exactly their planet came to be. They have plenty of imaginative ideas.
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Astonishingly, the so-called ‘human’ species appropriates about twenty percent of its planet’s net productive capacity. Humanity’s insatiable consumptive thirst will have profound impact on the future development of life on Earth.
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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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Human beings can’t decide whether to cherish trees or chop them down. This seems to be the take-away message in a tenth transmission we’ve just picked up from a far-off planet in crisis.
Found in a time capsule … A Clayoquot Sound forest activist reflects on civil disobedience and the lesson she learned from a black bear, and sings a revised version of Danny Boy.
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A crowd of Winnipeggers gather to hear one of Israel’s most courageous and incisive journalists — Ha’aretz reporter/columnist Amira Hass.
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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.
Bumbire Island sits on the northern tip of a sliver of an archipelago in southwest Lake Victoria, Tanzania, East Africa. The landscape is gorgeous, but hardscrabble fishing camps tell a different story.
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A former senior justice official of Earth’s most powerful nation vents his rage at the war machine his country has become.
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Human beings love money, as this fifth captured transmission testifies.
Little Rwanda will soon commemorate the twenty-second anniversary of the 1994 genocide. Between April 6 and early July 1994, an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis and some tens of thousands of Hutus perished.
Recent cuts in government support for students is causing enormous dismay on Rwandan university campuses, and exposed cracks in the Kagame government’s post-genocide reconciliation efforts.
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I had been pressing Marshall Islands conservationist Ben Chutaro to take me to Mili Atoll, to see the marine/nature conservancy he was setting up — but weather ended up not permitting. We went to Arno instead.
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Amid growing concerns about how to survive on a paltry income, Rwandan teachers turn to a traditional practice, whereby groups of people communally contribute money to help one another out.
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Young girls run and shout here at the Afghans4Tomorrow girl’s school, much as they do everywhere in the world. But the sight is unusual in Afghanistan because these girls wear school uniforms, not all-encompassing burkas.
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Young gang violence is endemic in the Central American nations of Guatemala and El Salvador, and its tentacles have spread north. Some would say the process has worked in reverse fashion.
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During South Africa’s Apartheid years, black families were routinely evicted from their land. Women and girls fared the worst. Sixteen years after the collapse of Apartheid, life in South Africa is as difficult as it’s ever been for women.
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Agriculture is the backbone of Tanzania’s life and economy. Three quarters of her people are small-scale, peasant farmers. Policies that empower farmers — particularly women — need to be implemented.
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Palestinian rap is only about a decade old, but it has spread throughout Israel, Palestine, and now to Lebanon. The rappers look to Tupac Shakur and the socially conscious rappers, and reject the gangsta image so popular in the west.
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One night, Mariana dreamed that she was happy to go to work. Her supervisor greeted her and Mariana was delighted to find a comfortable ergonomic chair waiting for her in front of the machine that she operates. Then she woke up.
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Water is one of Tanzania’s scarcest commodities. In the capital city of Dar es Salaam, about sixty percent of households don’t enjoy a reliable supply. The surest bet is a twenty-liter bucket of precious water for one dollar.
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Almost a hundred thousand U.S. troops now serve in Afghanistan, but the insurgency continues and expands. GPM contributor Reese Erlich visited with a group of anti-war activists, including an American marine who had fought there.
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In the West African village of Mapaki, education is being used to promote peace, after years of civil war.
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In the 1950s, journalist Tom Patterson became convinced that Shakespeare could help revitalize his hometown of Stratford, Ontario. Today, Suchitoto, El Salvador hopes to do the same, in partnership with Stratford.
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Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley has produced wine for over four thousand years. That tradition continues today, with Lebanon boasting some world-class reds. But vintners have had to deal with fundamentalists, civil war, and invading armies.
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Ethiopia is renowned for the diversity of its seeds, with native resistance to drought, pests and climate change. Listen to 1989 Right Livelihood Award winner Melaku Worede talk about seed diversity in his homeland, Ethiopia.
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Southern Lebanese farmers are in a bind. On the one hand, Israeli cluster bombs continue to pollute their fields. On the other hand, they’ve been abandoned by Lebanon’s political elite, who prefer to see Lebanon import its food.
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It’s hard to imagine a development tool more powerful than a radio station. For the past few years, a little station called FADECO has been promoting rural development in the community of Karagwe, in northwest Tanzania.
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Poor farmers have always set off to the nearest big city in search of income. Opportunities are often a dream, and obstacles abound. Many forsake their most valuable asset – their own traditions.
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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 development of rights for disabled people in industrialized countries is an encouraging trend – a sign of inclusiveness in this age of division and disparity. Imagine what it’s like to be a disabled person in a country like … Bolivia.
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Victoria, B.C. native Kevin Neish set off to Gaza at the end of May on the Mavi Marmara — and almost made it. He recalls Israel’s hijacking and brutalization of the Mavi’s passengers.
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.
If everyone on Earth earned what their labour was truly worth, global poverty would be less rampant. Paying people what their labour is worth is what the so-called Fair Trade movement is all about.
A joint training project between the Departments of Psychiatry at the Universities of Toronto and Addis Ababa are turning out some of Africa’s most skilled practitioners.
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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. Today, former rebels are presenting their perspective of the struggle–to tourists.
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On the bottom of a mountain slope in Honduras, farming communities depend on fresh waters and are trying to keep them clean.
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What if — during our teen years — we each had to write a sex advice column?
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Stuart Franklin is turning air miles into trees. Franklin — the founder of a carbon offsetting project in Ecuador — calculates how many seedlings he needs to plant to capture the carbon dioxide emitted by tourists jetting to the Galapagos Islands each year.
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.
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Palestinian farmers face a myriad of challenges. In the “West Bank,” Israel’s so-called “Security Barrier” has walled them off from their olive and vegetable groves. Farmers in Gaza are liable to be shot by soldiers manning Israel’s “security” perimeter.
Rwandans have grown rice, bananas, tea and coffee for generations. On one mountainside, villagers earn extra money processing their own coffee beans — thanks to a fellow Rwandan educated in Canada.
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.
To comprehend the obstacles that need to be overcome if peace and justice are to be achieved in the Middle East, one must spend time in the West Bank and Gaza, listening to Palestinians describe their hardships. The Israeli occupation is particularly egregious for youth, who — like Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet — feel seriously misunderstood.
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