Culture and Coexistence into the Great Unknown
While large fish fail to thrive at Southern California Edison’s artificial reef off the coast of San Clemente, California, mitigation mandated by the California Coastal Commission to repair destroyed kelp beds at their San Onofre Nuclear Plant (called SONGS), a wider marine mammal crisis is ongoing. Could radiation released from SONGS be the culprit in both cases?
A community of coffee farmers in Uganda has formed the Peace Kawomera Fair Trade Cooperative, focused on people of different faiths putting aside their differences to overcome generations of conflict and poverty. Now a Smithsonian Folkways recording has been released to celebrate their achievements.
In the name of the struggle against terrorism, a special operation — code named CONDOR – was conducted in the 1970s and 80s in South America. Its targets were left wing political dissidents, the organised labour and intellectuals. Condor soon became a network of military dictatorships, supported by the US State Department, the CIA and Interpol. A trial began in early March in Buenos Aires to attempt to bring to justice former dictators and military officers.
The government of Honduras plans the creation of neoliberal free-market enclaves, unaccountable to national laws and governed by foreign corporate interests. Stipulated for territory inhabited by Garifuna people and campesino farming communities, with propaganda about democracy, economic innovation and humanitarian justice, “President” Pepe Lobo should first refrain from presiding over the coup-backed “illegitimate regime.”
Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, “The Battle of Algiers,” as a study of the brutality of urban guerrilla warfare, serves an Arab-street-level counterpoint to Kathryn Bigelow’s US-imperialism-centered, torture-driven war propaganda film, “Zero Dark Thirty.”
Ikland recounts a quest to re-connect with the Ik people. For producer Cevin Soling, they represented the last outpost of imagination in a world devoid of myth. Soling and his crew risked their lives by traveling through war-ravaged northern Uganda to reach them. Their experience was alien and surreal in ways only Jonathan Swift might have imagined…
The Sacred Land Film Project captured a revival of a canoe ceremony with feasting, dancing and carving, honoring their sacred Ramu River. The region is part of the third largest intact rainforest ecosystem left on earth, where sustainable agriculture and forestry practices have allowed societies to thrive for thousands of years, now threatened by multinational logging interests and corrupt governmental entities.