Not many people in States even hear about it

By Greg Szymanski, JD
Aug. 24, 2010

GRANADA, NICARAGUA — In neighboring Guatemala, a rash of violence against 7th Day Adventists pastors and church members has virtually gone unreported in the States.

According to onlookers of the worldwide religious scene, Adventists are “the last of the Christians” to make a pure stand against Rome, “the Beast in Revelations”, bent on creating a one world religion based on anti-biblical principles.

The Vatican itself has admitted in many of their formal writings the battle lines of Christianity will come down to the Sabbath, saying either you follow 7th Day Adventists and worship on Saturday, the seventh day, or follow Roman Catholic tradition and worship on Sunday, the first day of the week.

Although the day of the Sabbath seems meaningless to many modern day “Christians”, the issue according to uncompromising  Bible scholars is paramount, pitting God’s Commandment and law set forth in both the Old and New Testament against man’s authority touted through Roman Catholic dogma and tradition.

This will be the final clash, says internationally known 7th Day “Adventist speaker, Professor Walter Veith. adding Rome will demand its authority through a Sunday law be recognized. Those who refuse, Veith continues, will be classified as heretics and will face the long standing Roman Catholic punishment of death.

Whether the string of violence against Adventists in Guatemala is related to the above struggle is unknown, but it should be considered, according to numerous true Bible believing onlookers, especially when looking at how Rome has dealt with true Bible believers in the past.

Here is a story that appeared in 2009 after an Adventist pastor was gunned down in Guatemala:

Co-op lawyers threaten Arctic Beacon with libel over Pastor Annett story

PASTOR ANNETT WITH THOSE EXPOSING VATICAN'S INDIGENOUS CANADIAN GENOCIDE

Knowing the longstanding feud between the Vatican and Pastor Annett, we feel Co-op radio has been pressured by Rome through its agents in the Canadian government and media to silence Annett.

The story appearing Aug. 12 in the Arctic Beacon will remain as published, adding to it these additional comments from Pastor Annett:

In the wake of my unilateral banning without due process from the premises of Vancouver Co-op Radio last Monday, August 9, and efforts by the station staff, through their lawyers, to justify this unreasonable banning through misinformation and misrepresentation, I hope this will clarify what’s going on:

1. Since at least early April, when I was in Europe on a lecture tour, an unknown man who bears a strong resemblance to me has been circulating throughout the downtown eastside of Vancouver and deliberately discrediting me through words and deeds designed to alienate my supporters and the community at large. According to eyewitnesses, he has offered native people money, made racist and sexist remarks to them, and on at least one occasion, entered the premises of Co-op radio with another person late one night to engage in actions clearly designed to defame me.

1. The identity of this person is still unknown.

1. The use of impersonators to discredit those in my network has happened on at least one other occasion, against my supporter Royce White Calf of the Oglala Lakota Nation, after he, like me, began to speak publicly of governmental involvement in the trafficking of native children in B.C.

1. I must assume that this impersonator is the person referred to in the staff’s letter that banned me, who appears on videotape inside the station with another person in the early morning of Tuesday, July 20, 2010.(see note, below) The station staff therefore have banned me under a false assumption, namely, that I am the man in the video; and yet, having made this mistake, none of the staff bothered to consult me, show me the video, or ask for my version of this incident, but instead, proceeded to bar me from the station without any such due process or discussion. I must ask why they did so, with such haste, in this unusual manner.

1. I state categorically that I am not the man depicted on the video in question, and was not on the premises of Vancouver Co-op Radio at the time and date alleged in the letter from station staff that banned me from the premises. The automatic assumption by the staff that I was that man, and their making public this erroneous assumption in writing, constitutes defamation of my character.

1. It has been my strong impression that for several years, program director Leela Chinniah has been looking for an excuse to terminate my program Hidden from History, and has been under pressure from unknown parties to do so. Her attempt to control the content of my show, bar homeless and native people from my program, and her outright demand to me that I not have Reg Argue on my show, all indicates this.

1. I cannot know if Leela Chinniah and other staff members know the identity of the person impersonating me, or if they are colluding with him in this obvious set up of me. And yet it is odd how easily this impersonator and his partner gained access to Co-op radio at that time of night, and how their presence there went on for hours without interference by security personnel who monitored the events by camera during that entire time. These events strongly suggest  collusion by station staff and/or Portland Hotel security in an apparent attempt to frame me for misconduct.

1. On the basis of these facts, I demand that Co-op radio staff rescind their banning of me from Co-op radio station premises, cease engaging in any further defamatory actions, words or assumptions towards me, withdraw their demands in their mis-dated letter of August 10, 2010, issue a public statement of apology to me, and allow me to return unhindered and not harrassed to my normal operation as chief programmer for the Hidden from History show every Monday.

By Greg Szymanski, JD
Aug. 13, 2010

The fresh water on our planet is in serious danger as more lakes and reservoirs are being taken over by toxic cyanobacteria, leaving the water undrinkable and dangerous to human health.

SATELLITE IMAGE LAKE ATITLAN

Save Lake Atitlan Mission, a Colorado non profit group, has tried to raise awareness of this serious problem, first using Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalen Highlands as a prime example.

The first step is to place an effective monitoring system into place because before you can solve a problem, the problem must be accurately identified.

Milt Baker, CEO of Blue Water Satellite in Ohio, a satellite imaging company specializing in detecting deadly cyanobacteria, has taken an interest in Lake Lake Atitlan.

Here are two blogs recently posted by Baker, emphasizing the seriousness of the problem at Lake Atitlan and how out dated and traditional hand grab sampling for cyanobacteria just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Lake Atitlan: a tarnished beauty

Lake Atitlan in Guatemala was once called the most beautiful lake in the world. Surrounded by three volcanoes this 30,000 acre lake and its beauty have been enjoyed by millions. It is also home to many descendants of the Mayan people. In recent years Lake Atitlan has become infested with Cyanobacteria tarnishing its once pristine beauty.

MILT BAKER

Cyanobacteria produce toxins which are extremely hazardous to health such as hepatotoxins which attack the liver and neurotoxins which attack the nervous system (See my blog Cyanobacteria: what you don’t know can hurt you). In addition to the potential for serious illnesses Lake Atitlan is sometimes malodorous and can produce skin rashes for anyone coming in contact with the water.

It is little wonder that tourism to Lake Atitlan has diminished recently .

Cyanobacteria like warm temperatures, food, and sunlight. Lake Atitlan is a case where through lack of environmental awareness raw sewage is dumped into the lake. That combined  with Phosphorus run off  from farm fertilizer has combined to stimulate the growth of Cyanobacteria.

Our company Blue Water Satellite uses satellite imaging to detect Cyanobacteria at parts per billion (ppb) levels. We are able to detect Cyanobacteria when it is still early in the bloom cycle so effective treatment methods can be used to kill it early before it becomes a significant bloom.

Blue Water Satellite is joining with a number of volunteer organizations to help clean up the lake. Blue Water will contribute satellite scans for no profit to organizations charged with clean up. With our help Lake Atitlan clean up efforts can monitor the effectiveness of treatment strategies.

There are a number of accepted treatment methods for clean up of lakes like Lake Atitlan. A few of them are listed below:

• Use Alum or an equivalent chemical to precipitate out the Phosphorus. This causes the food for the algae to sink to the bottom where the Cyanobacteria cannot use it, and the Cyanobacteria starves.

• Prevent Phosphorus from getting into the water. The most effective ways are to lessen the amount of Phosphorus that farmers use on their fields and to build Phosphorus remediation berms. Other techniques include the use of non-Phosphorus containing fertilizers like Biochar.  Blue Water Satellite can detect Phosphorus on land and help farmers to lower applications.

• Build a sewage treatment plant to keep sewage out of the lake.

• Use water circulation machines. Several manufacturers of water circulation machines have shown effectiveness in controlling Cyanobacteria with machines that circulate the water. The theory is that the circulation may disrupt the photosynthetic process of Cyanobacteria and cause them to die. Typically these are only good for 30-50 acres requiring a large number for a lake the size of Atitlan.

Blue Water Satellite is joining the groups helping to save Lake Atitlan. If a lake as large and complex as Lake Atitlan can be cleaned up it is truly a prototype for efforts that will go on around the world to improve our environment.

Water quality measurement: small sample size may produce large errors

Today water quality monitoring is typically done by taking samples of lakes, rivers, streams, etc., and sending them to a laboratory for analysis. This technique is typically called “grab sampling”. Grab sampling is done to detect various pollutants such as Phosphorus, E Coli, and algae just to name a few. Grab sampling can produce large measurement errors.

HAND GRAB SAMPLING

Because of the expense of grab sampling, typically water bodies rely on just a few samples to measure water body quality and this small sample size can produce large errors. Grab sampling is a very labor intensive process requiring travel to a site, often the use of a boat and many man-hours of labor. Because of the labor intensity and cost, water bodies are frequently monitored with very few samples. For example one large lake I am familiar with is monitored with 5 samples for a 10,000 acre lake.

From the few data points available water body managers frequently draw inferences and are forced to make assumptions. Our company, Blue Water Satellite, uses satellite imaging technology to sample entire water bodies. We are able to measure 5 samples per acre so for a 10,000 acre water body we would make 50,000 measurements as compared with the 5 noted above.

Comparing our data with the grab sampling data we have seen many errors made because of the small sample size. Here are a few of the errors we have seen based on small sample size:

• One error we see is the assumption that the whole lake is represented by the few sample points. We have found significant variability in water bodies and a few data points cannot produce a statistically significant picture of the entire water body. Variability in the water body may be due to wind, current, springs, etc.

• Another error we see is it is assumed that concentrations of pollutants cannot change by very much over short distances. Again, although it is assumed that water is homogeneous, often point sources of pollution can impact particular areas of water bodies. We have seen cases where leaky septic fields or run off produce particular patterns in one part of a lake.

• A third error we see is assuming that pollution found in one area of the lake is a significant portion of the problem when it may be small when compared with other areas.

• A fourth error is that the statistical significance can be increased by taking a few samples and inputting them into a model. This may produce errors because the model makes assumptions about the water body that may or may not apply. For example some modeling takes land use type into account to predict Phosphorus run off. These models may or may not represent actual conditions.

Underlying all these errors is the fact that the state of the water body is not completely understood. This lack of understanding could lead to errors in remediation methodologies that may be costly and fail to produce results. For example installing an expensive aeration system may not be appropriate when lake wide data is reviewed.

From our experience the old carpenter’s rule of “measure twice cut once” has an analog in water quality monitoring; “measure more before deploying remediation strategies”.

Independent voices being silenced one by one

By Greg Szymanski, JD
Aug. 12, 2010

Freedom of speech and the press is all but over in the U.S. and Canada and the following article illustrates how independent voices are being shut down, one by one like clay pigeons in a carnival shooting gallery.

Latin America is fully aware of how the global New World Order silences free speech and rarely a news week goes by without a journalist being gunned down or ripped apart in a car bombing.

PASTOR KEVIN ANNETT

This story comes from Pastor Kevin Annett fighting for the rights of indigenous people all over the planet. His long running radio show is about to be taken off the air and government thugs have now taken to impersonating him on the streets of Canada in order to discredit his good name.

Here is the story sent by the Indigenous Elders of  The Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared in Canada:

According to Annett, “Apparently a white guy resembling me and who claims to be me has been circulating on the streets of Vancouver, offering natives money, making sexist and racist remarks to them, and has even gone into Co-op radio late at night and pretended to be me. It’s all designed to not only alienate me from my base but discredit me personally to the world. I’ve been through this before, at the hands of the United Church , but this is on a much bigger scale now.”

Since the interior of Vancouver Co-op radio is heavily monitored by close circuit television cameras, we are concerned that the presence of this impersonator on the station premises is part of a plan by station staff to discredit Kevin and give themselves an excuse to ban him from the premises.

Kevin believes that at least one of the station staff has actually colluded in these assaults against him.

“In early 2007, two people physically assaulted me in the downtown eastside. They were both paid agents of Chief Ed John, who is suspected of involvement in child trafficking. These same two assaulters, Frank Martin and Helen Michel, appeared the next week at Co-op radio on Charles Boylan’s program. I asked Leela to ban the two of them from the station while I was present, for my own safety, and because they violated station policy. She not only refused to do so, but spread the rumor that I was discriminating against Indians! So she definitely colluded in their assault on me.”

Recently, another associate of Ed John, a native woman named Gunarjee who is a programmer at Co-op radio, has also been libeling and discrediting Kevin and his work among alternative media stations across Canada.

If Kevin Annett and Hidden from History are banned from the airwaves of Co-op radio, we will all lose. This recent attempt by the government and other parties to discredit and destroy Kevin is outrageous and disgusting.

We call upon the Co-op radio staff not only to allow Kevin the common law right to view the evidence against him, and face his accusers, before they proceed further, but to halt their harassment of him and his program.

We also call upon them, especially Leela Chinniah, to cease and desist from their efforts to interfere with the exposure of genocide and other crimes against our people, and to keep the airwaves open to Kevin Annett and the residential school eyewitnesses.

Finally, we announce that any removal of Kevin Annett or his Hidden from History program from Co-op radio will be met by our extended network of aboriginal people with public protests at the radio station, a boycott campaign directed against Vancouver Co-op radio, and other forms of direct action.

“Writing from a small town in Nicaragua on the way to Lake Atitlan, thoughts of my country return. I am not sure if I will return, but when the roads are out between Guatemala City and Atitlan, it leaves time for reflection. I was an American once, an Italian for a time. I was a Catholic once, an Athiest for a time and let’s not leave out being a Jew and a Christian , sometimes all at the same time. I was a journalist once, a juris doctor of law and let’s not forget race horse trainer and political insider at a young age in Chicago’s Democratic machine.  Now I am neutral like Switzerland, wondering how I got on this bus going to Guatemala with a camera and guitar in hand. I also wonder how America got to be a tin horn third world country practically overnight. Some might argue that last statement but here are some thoughts about America’s beginnings while I wait for the roads to clear.”

By Greg Szymanski, JD

July 27, 2010

No one in their right mind can deny the necessity for a separation of Church and State.

Then why is it many proclaim these United States of America to be either a Christian, Protestant or Catholic nation?

The reason is most Christians, Protestants and Catholics are not of sound mind at least when it comes to understanding their country and the Constitution it was founded on.

We are free to worship as we choose, but we are not a nation to let those who worship dictate their own personal agendas, especially in matters too practical for religious or spiritual minds to comprehend.

Matters concerning the welfare this unique nation need sound minds able to leave their hidden agendas and spirituality at the doorstep with their wives and families to sort out. I fear men  of strong heart and sound minds no longer exist, leaving our nation in the hands of  those dictated by the folly of emotion and self-interest. I fear women, driven to support, no longer exist and do not realize their support is worth more than gold on the table.

We are a nation of equal people no matter what are spiritual nature,  whether just or unjust. It is all we have, but more than most countries ever had. Do not cloud it with the afterlife!  Do not dictate! There are many afterlives; America need not be dictated by any one of them over another.

Like I said even though we are free to practice or not practice the religion of our choice, the idea that America should be labeled any one of the above nations is absurd. In fact, this is the very concept for the separation of Church, a concept that should not only be championed publicly but remembered privately.

It should be remembered that this country never was, it is not now and never will be a Christian, Protestant or Catholic nation. Of course, zealous and fanatical members of all three groups will try and persuade you otherwise, but the truth is America is something much different, something much more secular than “God-faring” men would like to admit.

Morality and the founding of America are light years apart as the historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, “the idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety.”

So as Christian fundamentalists today continue to try and convince America to return to the Christianity of early America,  according to the historian, Robert T. Handy, “No more than 10 percent– probably less– of Americans in 1800s were even members of congregations.”

This brings to mind the words of our Second President John Adams when he said his biggest fear was that the children of the future would never understand the truth about the founding of this country and the Revolutionary War.

He was right.

And more then 200 years later it can be said with shame and sadness but without question that America is in fact based on a thousand falsehoods, leaving such a trail of lies that it winds around this country a hundred times over.

According to an article by Jim Walker at Archiving Early America, “The Founding Fathers, also, rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy. Although they supported the free exercise of any religion, they understood the dangers of religion. Most of them believed in deism and attended Freemasonry lodges. According to John J. Robinson, ‘Freemasonry had been a powerful force for religious freedom.’  Freemasons took seriously the principle that men should worship according to their own conscience. Masonry welcomed anyone from any religion or non-religion, as long as they believed in a Supreme Being. Washington, Franklin, Hancock, Hamilton, Lafayette, and many others accepted Freemasonry.”

Here is more from Walker’s articles about some of our founders, the Treaty of Tripoli, the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Of course, there remains a million other interpretations of the men who founded this country and their writings, but it can be said no one today knows the full truth and if someone says he does, he is nothing more than a liar himself.

One thing can be said, though, the enemies of this country both foreign and domestic  in this modern age love hiding behind the cloaks of many religions notwithstanding the the three mentioned above.

These modern men have twisted the express meaning of the Constitution and the few hard facts remaining of the men who help found this country, replacing it with fictitious accounts and stories of their choice depending on what suits their immediate needs.

It is this fictitious cloak of religious nonsense labeling our country and its founders falsely without a clear basis in fact that must be uncovered if America is to survive.

The idea that this country was founded on biblical principles is absurd; It must be remembered that we cannot go back to something that never was. Our country was founded in order that each one of us worship as we choose free from oppression; It was not intended that your particular religious or spiritual view become the oppressor of the freedoms inherent in our Constitution, a document that respects the Jew as much as the Atheist, the Christian as much as the Muslim.

If this spiritual oppression or self-righteousness among our leaders and our people occurs, we become as dangerous as the enemy that we now face, an enemy deeply entrenched in the bowels and confines of the U.S. government and the strong religious groups that support it.

Here is more from Mr. Walker’s article from  Archiving Early America:

George Washington

Much of the myth of Washington’s alleged Christianity came from Mason Weems influential book, “Life of Washington.” The story of the cherry tree comes from this book and it has no historical basis. Weems, a Christian minister portrayed Washington as a devout Christian, yet Washington’s own diaries show that he rarely attended Church.

Washington revealed almost nothing to indicate his spiritual frame of mind, hardly a mark of a devout Christian. In his thousands of letters, the name of Jesus Christ never appears. He rarely spoke about his religion, but his Freemasonry experience points to a belief in deism. Washington’s initiation occurred at the Fredericksburg Lodge on 4 November 1752, later becoming a Master mason in 1799, and remained a freemason until he died.

To the United Baptist Churches in Virginia in May, 1789, Washington said that every man “ought to be protected in worshipping the Deity according to the dictates of his own conscience.”

After Washington’s death, Dr. Abercrombie, a friend of his, replied to a Dr. Wilson, who had interrogated him about Washington’s religion replied, “Sir, Washington was a Deist.”

Thomas Jefferson

Even most Christians do not consider Jefferson a Christian. In many of his letters, he denounced the superstitions of Christianity. He did not believe in spiritual souls, angels or godly miracles. Although Jefferson did admire the morality of Jesus, Jefferson did not think him divine, nor did he believe in the Trinity or the miracles of Jesus. In a letter to Peter Carr, 10 August 1787, he wrote, “Question with boldness even the existence of a god.”

Jefferson believed in materialism, reason, and science. He never admitted to any religion but his own. In a letter to Ezra Stiles Ely, 25 June 1819, he wrote, “You say you are a Calvinist. I am not. I am of a sect by myself, as far as I know.”

John Adams

Adams, a Unitarian, flatly denied the doctrine of eternal damnation. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote:

“I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved — the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!”

In his letter to Samuel Miller, 8 July 1820, Adams admitted his unbelief of Protestant Calvinism: “I must acknowledge that I cannot class myself under that denomination.”

In his, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” [1787-1788], John Adams wrote:

“The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

“. . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind.”

James Madison

Called the father of the Constitution, Madison had no conventional sense of Christianity. In 1785, Madison wrote in his Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments:

“During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

“What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”

Benjamin Franklin

Although Franklin received religious training, his nature forced him to rebel against the irrational tenets of his parents Christianity. His Autobiography revels his skepticism, “My parents had given me betimes religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.

“. . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist.”

In an essay on “Toleration,” Franklin wrote:

“If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England.”

Dr. Priestley, an intimate friend of Franklin, wrote of him:

“It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin’s general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers” (Priestley’s Autobiography)

Thomas Paine

This freethinker and author of several books, influenced more early Americans than any other writer. Although he held Deist beliefs, he wrote in his famous The Age of Reason:

“I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. ”

“Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. ”
The U.S. Constitution

The most convincing evidence that our government did not ground itself upon Christianity comes from the very document that defines it– the United States Constitution.

If indeed our Framers had aimed to found a Christian republic, it would seem highly unlikely that they would have forgotten to leave out their Christian intentions in the Supreme law of the land. In fact, nowhere in the Constitution do we have a single mention of Christianity, God, Jesus, or any Supreme Being. There occurs only two references to religion and they both use exclusionary wording. The 1st Amendment’s says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. . .” and in Article VI, Section 3, “. . . no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

Thomas Jefferson interpreted the 1st Amendment in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in January 1, 1802:

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and State.”

Some Religious activists try to extricate the concept of separation between church and State by claiming that those words do not occur in the Constitution. Indeed they do not, but neither does it exactly say “freedom of religion,” yet the First Amendment implies both.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom:

“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”

James Madison, perhaps the greatest supporter for separation of church and State, and whom many refer to as the father of the Constitution, also held similar views which he expressed in his letter to Edward Livingston, 10 July 1822:

“And I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in shewing that religion & Govt will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together.”

Today, if ever our government needed proof that the separation of church and State works to ensure the freedom of religion, one only need to look at the plethora of Churches, temples, and shrines that exist in the cities and towns throughout the United States. Only a secular government, divorced from religion could possibly allow such tolerant diversity.

The Declaration of Independence

Many Christians who think of America as founded upon Christianity usually present the Declaration as “proof.” The reason appears obvious: the document mentions God. However, the God in the Declaration does not describe Christianity’s God. It describes “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” This nature’s view of God agrees with deist philosophy but any attempt to use the Declaration as a support for Christianity will fail for this reason alone.
Article XI from the Treaty of Tripoli Article XI from the Treaty of Tripoli

More significantly, the Declaration does not represent the law of the land as it came before the Constitution. The Declaration aimed at announcing their separation from Great Britain and listed the various grievances with the “thirteen united States of America.” The grievances against Great Britain no longer hold, and we have more than thirteen states. Today, the Declaration represents an important historical document about rebellious intentions against Great Britain at a time before the formation of our independent government. Although the Declaration may have influential power, it may inspire the lofty thoughts of poets, and judges may mention it in their summations, it holds no legal power today. Our presidents, judges and policemen must take an oath to uphold the Constitution, but never to the Declaration of Independence.

Of course the Declaration depicts a great political document, as it aimed at a future government upheld by citizens instead of a religious monarchy. It observed that all men “are created equal” meaning that we all come inborn with the abilities of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The Declaration says nothing about our rights secured by Christianity, nor does it imply anything about a Christian foundation.

Treaty of Tripoli

Unlike governments of the past, the American Fathers set up a government divorced from religion. The establishment of a secular government did not require a reflection to themselves about its origin; they knew this as an unspoken given. However, as the U.S. delved into international affairs, few foreign nations knew about the intentions of America. For this reason, an insight from at a little known but legal document written in the late 1700s explicitly reveals the secular nature of the United States to a foreign nation. Officially called the “Treaty of peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli, of Barbary,” most refer to it as simply the Treaty of Tripoli. In Article 11, it states:

Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul General of Algiers Joel Barlow, U.S. Consul General of Algiers …Copyright National Portait Gallery Smithsonian Institution/Art Resource NY

“As the Government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquillity, of Musselmen; and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.”

The preliminary treaty began with a signing on 4 November, 1796 (the end of George Washington’s last term as president). Joel Barlow, the American diplomat served as counsel to Algiers and held responsibility for the treaty negotiations. Barlow had once served under Washington as a chaplain in the revolutionary army. He became good friends with Paine, Jefferson, and read Enlightenment literature. Later he abandoned Christian orthodoxy for rationalism and became an advocate of secular government. Barlow, along with his associate, Captain Richard O’Brien, et al, translated and modified the Arabic version of the treaty into English. From this came the added Amendment 11. Barlow forwarded the treaty to U.S. legislators for approval in 1797. Timothy Pickering, the secretary of state, endorsed it and John Adams concurred (now during his presidency), sending the document on to the Senate. The Senate approved the treaty on June 7, 1797, and officially ratified by the Senate with John Adams signature on 10 June, 1797. All during this multi-review process, the wording of Article 11 never raised the slightest concern. The treaty even became public through its publication in The Philadelphia Gazette on 17 June 1797.

So here we have a clear admission by the United States that our government did not found itself upon Christianity. Unlike the Declaration of Independence, this treaty represented U.S. law as all treaties do according to the Constitution (see Article VI, Sect. 2).

Although the Christian exclusionary wording in the Treaty of Tripoli only lasted for eight years and no longer has legal status, it clearly represented the feelings of our Founding Fathers at the beginning of the U.S. government.

Common Law Signers of the Treaty of Tripoli Signers of the Treaty of Tripoli

According to the Constitution’s 7th Amendment: “In suits at common law. . . the right of trial by jury shall be preserved; and no fact, tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any court of the United States than according to the rules of the common law.”

Here, many Christians believe that common law came from Christian foundations and therefore the Constitution derives from it. They use various quotes from Supreme Court Justices proclaiming that Christianity came as part of the laws of England, and therefore from its common law heritage.

But one of our principle Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, elaborated about the history of common law in his letter to Thomas Cooper on February 10, 1814:

“For we know that the common law is that system of law which was introduced by the Saxons on their settlement in England, and altered from time to time by proper legislative authority from that time to the date of Magna Charta, which terminates the period of the common law. . . This settlement took place about the middle of the fifth century. But Christianity was not introduced till the seventh century; the conversion of the first christian king of the Heptarchy having taken place about the year 598, and that of the last about 686. Here then, was a space of two hundred years, during which the common law was in existence, and Christianity no part of it.

“. . . if any one chooses to build a doctrine on any law of that period, supposed to have been lost, it is incumbent on him to prove it to have existed, and what were its contents. These were so far alterations of the common law, and became themselves a part of it. But none of these adopt Christianity as a part of the common law. If, therefore, from the settlement of the Saxons to the introduction of Christianity among them, that system of religion could not be a part of the common law, because they were not yet Christians, and if, having their laws from that period to the close of the common law, we are all able to find among them no such act of adoption, we may safely affirm (though contradicted by all the judges and writers on earth) that Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.”

In the same letter, Jefferson examined how the error spread about Christianity and common law. Jefferson realized that a misinterpretation had occurred with a Latin term by Prisot, “*ancien scripture*,” in reference to common law history. The term meant “ancient scripture” but people had incorrectly interpreted it to mean “Holy Scripture,” thus spreading the myth that common law came from the Bible. Jefferson writes:

“And Blackstone repeats, in the words of Sir Matthew Hale, that ‘Christianity is part of the laws of England,’ citing Ventris and Strange ubi surpa. 4. Blackst. 59. Lord Mansfield qualifies it a little by saying that ‘The essential principles of revealed religion are part of the common law.” In the case of the Chamberlain of London v. Evans, 1767. But he cites no authority, and leaves us at our peril to find out what, in the opinion of the judge, and according to the measure of his foot or his faith, are those essential principles of revealed religion obligatory on us as a part of the common law.”

Thus we find this string of authorities, when examined to the beginning, all hanging on the same hook, a perverted expression of Priscot’s, or on one another, or nobody.”

The Encyclopedia Britannica, also describes the Saxon origin and adds: “The nature of the new common law was at first much influenced by the principles of Roman law, but later it developed more and more along independent lines.” Also prominent among the characteristics that derived out of common law include the institution of the jury, and the right to speedy trial.

Christian Sources

Virtually all the evidence that attempts to connect a foundation of Christianity upon the government rests mainly on quotes and opinions from a few of the colonial statesmen who had professed a belief in Christianity. Sometimes the quotes come from their youth before their introduction to Enlightenment ideas or simply from personal beliefs. But statements of beliefs, by themselves, say nothing about Christianity as the source of the U.S. government.

There did occur, however, some who wished a connection between church and State. Patrick Henry, for example, proposed a tax to help sustain “some form of Christian worship” for the state of Virginia. But Jefferson and other statesmen did not agree. In 1779, Jefferson introduced a bill for the Statute for Religious Freedom which became Virginia law. Jefferson designed this law to completely separate religion from government. None of Henry’s Christian views ever got introduced into Virginia’s or U.S. Government law.

Unfortunately, later developments in our government have clouded early history. The original Pledge of Allegiance, authored by Francis Bellamy in 1892 did not contain the words “under God.” Not until June 1954 did those words appear in the Allegiance. The United States currency never had “In God We Trust” printed on money until after the Civil War. Many Christians who visit historical monuments and see the word “God” inscribed in stone, automatically impart their own personal God of Christianity, without understanding the Framers Deist context.

In the Supreme Court’s 1892 Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, Justice David Brewer wrote that “this is a Christian nation.” Many Christians use this as evidence. However, Brewer wrote this in dicta, as a personal opinion only and does not serve as a legal pronouncement. Later Brewer felt obliged to explain himself: “But in what sense can [the United States] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or the people are compelled in any manner to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or in name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within its borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all.”

Conclusion

The Framers derived an independent government out of Enlightenment thinking against the grievances caused by Great Britain. Our Founders paid little heed to political beliefs about Christianity. The 1st Amendment stands as the bulkhead against an establishment of religion and at the same time insures the free expression of any belief. The Treaty of Tripoli, an instrument of the Constitution, clearly stated our non-Christian foundation. We inherited common law from Great Britain which derived from pre-Christian Saxons rather than from Biblical scripture.

Today we have powerful Christian organizations who work to spread historical myths about early America and attempt to bring a Christian theocracy to the government. If this ever happens, then indeed, we will have ignored the lessons from history. Fortunately, most liberal Christians today agree with the principles of separation of church and State, just as they did in early America.

“They all attributed the peaceful dominion of religion in their country mainly to the separation of church and state. I do not hesitate to affirm that during my stay in America I did not meet a single individual, of the clergy or the laity, who was not of the same opinion on this point”
-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

Hiding in shadows of his past reliving slow moving dreams

By Greg Szymanski, JD
June 23, 2010

On a bus headed to nowhere there’s a bird hitching a ride in the back, singing nonsense.  I’ve done a lot of that in my life and it sounds good.

What’s better than singing nonsense on a bus, looking out to nowhere and thinking very hard to yourself  you’re going somewhere.

Somewhere right to hell, some say. And others say that somewhere is heaven.

But it’s God’s plan unavailable to the mortal man, so says Paul Simon.

And I will begin singing the nonsense again for God knows how long, of course, slip sliding away, as Simon says.  I will probably sing this old song over and over again with the bird in the back of the bus till I hit the Nicaragua border. Then I’ll order some food in Spanish.

That part will be over then, the stomach now full, the passport now out, everybody looking at the eyes with badges wondering whose crooked or whose straight.

Back in my seat, I have barely even noticed the people with me. Frankly, I don’t care as long as my passport is secure with the money hidden in my boot.

The money is for the poor in Guatemala, those people who eat dirt off the floor after the U.S. backed genocide. I realize that is what I am headed for, but I brought this old guitar to ease the pain for all. I learned a few Willie Nelson songs for the locals to hear and before I left back in the States I started a non profit organization in case we all go broke.

My plan is to get help from the rich, all those eating steak right now,

I hope my plan works since even the nonsensical bird in the back of the bus needs to eat.

(Editor’s Note: A short piece from Greg’s Guatemala Diaries, as he makes his way to Lake Atitlan. If you got a few pennies hit the donate button and the money will go to help the poor in Atitlan. Here is a song Greg has played for years, not quite as good as Willie, but he said “it brought in  a few bucks on the streets of Italy when my vagabound soul was wondering there.”

By Greg Szymanski, JD
July 21, 2010

GRANADA, NICARAGUA — On the way to Guatemala, a quick detour to Nicaragua left time to reflect and try to understand what lies ahead in the Maya highlands near their sacred Lake Atitlan.

The purpose of this trip is to continue efforts to raise awareness and help for the indigenous people suffering from severe poverty and pollution. We have documented in the past the toxic cyanobacteria condition of Lake Atitlan, leaving the water undrinkable for more than 200,000 indigenous people. (Editor’s Note: I would ask all my readers and friends of Arctic Beacon to donate whatever they can to defray costs of this long trip as well as money to be given directly to the poor at Lake Atitlan. Any little bit helps while hitting the donate button on this web site…Please note if you donation is directed for Lake Atitlan)

But to truly understand why the Lake Atitlan region, as well as the Lake Isabal region, has been left polluted and impoverished, one must understand and reflect on the genocide of the Maya through the 1960s till the 90s.

A good place to start even when sitting at a Nicaragua internet cafe shop is Victor Perera’s book, Unfinished Conquest: The Guatemalan Tragedy, Daniel Chauche , Photographer (Berkeley; CA: Univ. of California , 1993).

According to preventgenocide.org, Victor Perera is a native Guatemalan who took the better part of 6 years to write this book. This book is chock full of great information gathered from hundreds of interviews. Perera doesn’t waste time trying to interpret the events he writes about, instead he let’s the participants and witnesses speak for themselves. He interviews everybody for this book from wealthy landowners, government officials, military personnel, catholic and evangelical clergy and mostly the Mayan people who have suffered from 30 years of civil war. He then fills in the cracks with historical background. His writing is very precise and specific, his descriptions paint a very vivid picture of the oppression and genocide that continues to take place. The book begins with his visits to the garbage dump slums of Guatemala city and proceeds to other hot spots of violence. The core of the book is those chapters about the ixil triangle area where as many as one third of the local Mayan population was killed, disappeared or forced to flee the country. “By telling the stories of real people, Mayas who cling to their traditional gods, their communal ways and their brilliant woven clothing, Perera has selected the most effective means of conveying the astonishing resilience of Mayan culture. “Perera finds that military terrorism has outlasted the Communist threat; murder and massacre have become the reflexive response to any disagreement, public or private.”

And while on the bus going to Lake Atitlan, another book carried in my briefcase  and highly recommended is a book about Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán, (James D. Sexton translator and editor) Ignacio: The Diary of a Maya Indian of Guatemala, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press).

This  story concerns Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán, a Maya Indian who resides on the shores of the beautiful Lake Atitlán, Guatemala. The story narrates Ignacio’s life town, and country during the 1980s, a period when many campesinos found themselves caught between two fires–the insurgency of the guerrillas and the counterinsurgency of the army. Meanwhile, Ignacio and his fellow townspeople attempted to maintain as much normalcy in their lives as possible.

And while there should be a lot of time to read, here is a good list to really begin to understand the past Guatemalen genocide and why it has left the Lake Atitlan region impoverished and polluted. The following information is taken from Prevent Genocide.org

RESOURCES:

News Monitor on Guatemala 2001-2004

Books and Articles

Kent Ashabranner, Children of the Maya; A Guatemalan Indian Odyssey Dodd, Mead 1986.

Written for Youth. Recounts the persecution and genocide of the Mayan Indians in Guatemala by the Guatemalan government. Not for all children.

Patrick Ball, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F. Spirer, State Violence in Guatemala, 1960-1996: A Quantitative Reflection, American Association for the Advancement of Scienceshr. See aaas.org/guatemala/ciidh/qr/english/

Edgar Alfredo Balsells Tojo, Olvido o memoria : el dilema de la sociedad guatemalteca, Guatemala : F&G Editores Litografía Nawal Wuj, 2001, 228 pp.

Summary: An excellent analysis of Guatemala’s tortured relationship with its past, with focus on the background of the conflict, human rights abuses, the project of the “Comité de Esclarecimiento Histórico” and the legacy of genocide and the tribunals of terror.

Beristain, Carlos. “The Value of Memory.” On the CSVR website .

Cabrera, Roberto. “Should we remember? Recovering Historical Memory in Guatemala.”

On the CSVR website . www.incore.ulst.ac.uk/home/publication/ research/dwtp/cabrera.pdf

Robert M. Carmack (Editor), Harvest of Violence: The Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis (University of Oklahoma Press; 1992)

There are 10 different case histories all written by different people who are among the top guatemalan scholars.

Ricardo Falla, Massacres in the Jungle: Ixcan, Guatemala, 1975-1982, Translated from Masacres de la Selva (Boulder, Co, Westview, 1994)

Ricardo Falla, S.J., has done pastoral work with the Communities of Population in Resistance in the Ixcán since 1987. He is the author of numerous books, including his most recent one, Massacres of the Ixcán Jungle, which documents the army massacres of the early 1980s.

Felipe Gómez Isa, Asier Martínez Bringas, et al. Racismo y genocidio en Guatemala /[Bilbao] : Universidad de Deusto, Instituto de Derechos Humanos, 2000. 31 p.

Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala : A History of Race and Nation

Over the latter half of the twentieth century, the Guatemalan state slaughtered more than two hundred thousand of its citizens. In the wake of this violence, a vibrant pan-Mayan movement has emerged, one that is challenging Ladino (non-indigenous) notions of citizenship and national identity. In The Blood of Guatemala Greg Grandin locates the origins of this ethnic resurgence within the social processes of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century state formation rather than in the ruins of the national project of recent decades. Focusing on Mayan elites in the community of Quetzaltenango, Grandin shows how their efforts to maintain authority over the indigenous population and secure political power in relation to non-Indians played a crucial role in the formation of the Guatemalan nation. To explore the close connection between nationalism, state power, ethnic identity, and political violence, Grandin draws on sources as diverse as photographs, public rituals, oral testimony, literature, and a collection of previously untapped documents written during the nineteenth century. He explains how the cultural anxiety brought about by Guatemala’s transition to coffee capitalism during this period led Mayan patriarchs to develop understandings of race and nation that were contrary to Ladino notions of assimilation and progress. This alternative national vision, however, could not take hold in a country plagued by class and ethnic divisions. In the years prior to the 1954 coup, class conflict became impossible! e to contain as the elites violently opposed land claims made by indigenous peasants. This “history of power” reconsiders the way scholars understand the history of Guatemala and will be relevant to those studying nation building and indigenous communities across Latin America.

Greg Grandin “History, motive, law, intent: combining historical and legal methods in understanding Guatemala’s 1981–1983 genocide” in Robert Gellately and Ben Kiernan, editors, The specter of genocide : mass murder in historical perspective, New York : Cambridge University Press, May 2003.

Focusing on the twentieth century, this collection of essays by leading international experts offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and analysis of multiple cases of genocide and genocidal acts. The book contains studies of the Armenian genocide; the victims of Stalinist terror; the Holocaust; and Imperial Japan. Contributors explore colonialism and address the fate of the indigenous peoples in Africa, North America, and Australia. In addition, extensive coverage of the post-1945 period includes the atrocities in the former Yugoslavia, Bali, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, East Timor, and Guatemala

Priscilla B. Hayner, Unspeakable Truths : Confronting State Terror and Atrocity, (Routledge, Dec. 2000), 304 pp.

A detailed survey of the twenty major truth commissions established around the world, with special attention to South Africa, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala. Exploring inner workings of these official investigations – the anguish, the injustice, and the legacy of hate they are meant to absolve – the author finds that victims are torn between the need to remember and the need to forget.

Thomas Hoepker, Return of the Maya (photographs by Thomas Hoepker, Magnum) New York : Henry Holt, 1998, p. xi, 144 p. :

W. George Lovell, Conquest and Survival in Colonial Guatemala: A Historical Geography of the Cuchumatán Highlands, 1500-1821 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), 279 pp,.

Thomas Melville, Through a Glass Darkly: The U.S. Holocaust in Central America (Xlibris Corporation, 2005), 652 pp

The stark facts about the genocide of the indigenous Mayans in Guatemala during the 1970’s and 1980’s have been reported by others, but not in an easily readable format. Other sources have attempted to spell out the role of the US government in the genocide, but more in a legal or academic tone. This book tells the longitudinal story in measured detail and in a personal manner through the life story of Maryknoll priest Ron Hennessey who worked in El Petén and later in San Mateo Ixtan. The book describes Hennessey’s conversion from being an unapologetic patriot from Iowa to a staunch opponent of Ronald Reagan’s policies in Central America – policies that occasionally threatened his life. [Reverand Ron Hennessey b.11Oct1929, Rowley, Buchanan Co, IA, d.29Apr1999, age 69, of a heart attack at his sister's home, Waterloo, Black Hawk Co, IA, burial in Maryknoll Cemetery, Maryknoll, NY. He was ordained in Maryknoll, NY, in 1964, and served in Central America for 34 years, mostly in Guatemala and El Salvador. ]

Victor Montejo, Testimony : death of a Guatemalan village, translated by Victor Perera, (Willimantic, CT : Curbstone Press, 1987), 113 p.

An eyewitness account by a Guatemalan primary school teacher, detailing one instance of violent conflict between the indigenous Mayan people and the army. Written in clear, direct prose, this account reads like an adventure story while conveying an historical reality. Victor Montejo is a Jakaltek Maya from the Huehuetenango in the Northwestern Highlands of Guatemala where he was a school teacher before coming to the United States. His book of Jakaltek-Maya folk tales and fables, The Bird Who Cleans the World, is the first such collection published in English. He is the author of several books, including Testimony: Death of a Guatemalan Village, and the poetry books, El Kanil: Man of Lightning and Sculpted Stones. A professor of anthropology at the University of California-Davis, he lives in California with his wife and children. A film based on this book is now being developed by Cutting Edge Entertainment. The Spanish language vewrsion was publiched as Testimonio : muerte de una comunidad indígena en Guatemala, (Guatemala : Editorial Universitaria, 1993), 105 p.

Victor Montejo, Voices from Exile : Violence and Survival in Modern Maya History, (Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1999), xiv, 287 p.

Victor Montejo’s latest book is an important and brilliant analysis of recent Mayan history by one of the Mayan people’s most significant scholars. It is especially important because this is an Indigenous voice speaking about Mayan history rather than the however well-intentioned and scholarly rigorous recent work of non-Mayan Americans like Drs. Nelson and Warren. Montejo, a Popti Mayan from Jakaltenango in Guatemala’s Western highlands, was both an eyewitness to much recent Mayan history as well as a US-trained academic.

Loucky, James and Robert Carlsen. Summer 1991. “Massacre in Santiago Atitlan [Dec. 1990]” Cultural Survival Quarterly.

Nelson, Craig W. and Kenneth I. Taylor, Witness to Genocide: The Present Situation of Indians in Guatemala. London: Survival International. 1983

José Emilio Ordóñez Cifuentes, Rostros de las prácticas etnocidas en Guatemala , (México, D.F. : Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ; [Guatemala] : Corte de Constitucionalidad de Guatemala : Procurador de los Derechos Humanos, 1996, 173 p. ;

Jan Perlin, “The Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission Finds Genocide” ILSA Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol. 6, Num 2, (Spring 2000), p. 389 -414

Article also in the International Law Students’ Association Journal by a member of CEH. www.nsulaw.nova.edu/student/student_organizations/ILSAJournal/issues/6-2/Perlin%206-2.htm

Ron Theodore Robin, Scandals and scoundrels : seven cases that shook the academy, (Berkeley : University of California Press, 2004)

Contents: Introduction : why do they happen? — Plagiarism and the demise of gatekeepers — The noble lie : “arming America” and the right to bear arms — “A self of many possibilities” : Joseph Ellis, the protean historian — The ghost of Caliban : Derek Freeman and “the fateful hoaxing of Margaret Mead” — Violent people and gentle savages : the Yanomami genocide controversy — The willful suspension of disbelief : Rigoberta Menchu and the making of the Mayan holocaust – Science fiction : Sokal’s hoax and the “linguist left” — Conclusion : what do they mean? Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index. Subjects: Plagiarism. Impostors and imposture. Learning and scholarship–Moral and ethical aspects.

Victoria Sanford, Buried secrets : Truth and human rights in Guatemala, New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

Sanford examines political transformation through ethnographically detailed case studies of the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries of massacre victims, the excavation of collective memory, and the reconstruction of community among massacre survivors, refugees and displaced peoples. She traces political changes from the micro of political mobilization in relatively unknown rural villages to the macro level of national political events.. Sanford explores genocidal massacres of the late 1970s and early 1980s (known as La Violencia) in Guatemala from the perspective of rural Maya survivors. Since 1994, she has conducted research with the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation and collected more than 350 testimonies from massacre survivors. She examines how the excavation of individual and collective memory is enacted through the legal process of the exhumation of clandestine cemeteries and how integration of these memories of genocide of the Maya are critical elements for national reconciliation and peacebuilding. She studies collective trauma and healing through the reconstruction of popular memory and truth. Her Dissertation, “Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala” 2000a. “Buried Secrets: Truth and Human Rights in Guatemala,” (Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University) will soon be published as a book. She is co-author (with the FAFG) of Informe de la Fundación de Antropología Forense de Guatemala: Cuatro Casos Paradigmaticos Solicitados por La Comisión para el Escalrecimiento Historico de Guatemala Realizadas en las Comunidades de Panzós, Belén, Acul y Chel (Guatemala City: FAFG, 2000). Sanford is in the Department of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame. http://www.nd.edu/~anthro/Sanford.html

See also:
“Coming to Terms with Genocide in Guatemala: The Chilling Effect of Army Impunity and Local Prosecution” Presented June 10, 2001 at the 4th Association of Genocide Scholars Conference, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis “From I, Rigoberta to the Commissioning of Truth: Maya Women and the Reshaping of Guatemalan History”, Cultural Critique 47 (2001) 16-53 http://muse.jhu.edu/demo/cul/47.1sanford.pdf[Access article in PDF]
“Civil Patrol Massacres and the ‘Gray Zone’ of Justice” http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~caguirre/sanfordpr.html

Jean-Marie Simon, Guatemala : Eternal Spring Eternal Tyranny, (W.W. Norton & Company, 256 pp.

For 20 years Guatemala’s government has been one of the most repressive on earth, yet the least acknowledged in the Western hemisphere. Jean-Marie Simon spent six years in Guatemala and the result is a beautiful but disturbing book of a civilization violated. More than 130 full-color photographs. For 20 years Guatemala’s government has been one of the most repressive on earth, yet the least acknowledged in the Western hemisphere. Jean-Marie Simon spent six years in Guatemala and the result is a beautiful but disturbing book of a civilization violated. More than 130 full-color photographs.
One has to understand the purpose of this amnesty international book. The sole intent is to demonstrate the deplorable human rights situation in Guatemala. There is no intent to present a balanced picture. Basically it is a summarization of Guatemala in the 1980s a terrible decade for that country. No punches are pulled here, just page after page of horror upon horror all presented in vivid color. The photography is wonderful and i can’t think of many books about Guatemala with better photos. They capture the beauty of the land and people and the blatant tragedy at hand. This book isn’t for the squeamish. I first read it as i was preparing to travel there to study Spanish. This book scared me to death but more than that it outraged me and i think that was the purpose. Secondly it does educate at a basic level what has been going on in Guatemala. A good primer about the human rights atrocities in Guatemala.

Clark Taylor , (b. 1934). Return of Guatemala’s refugees : reweaving the torn (Philadelphia : Temple University Press, 1998) 228 p.

On February 13, 1982, the Guatemalan army stormed into the remote northern Guatemala Ixcan village of Santa María Tzejá. The villagers had already fled in terror, but over the next six days seventeen of them, mostly women and children, were caught and massacred, animals were slaughtered, and the entire village was burned to the ground. Twelve years later, utilizing terms of refugee agreements reached in 1982, villagers from Santa María who had fled to Mexico returned to their homes and lands to re-create their community with those who had stayed in Guatemala. Return of Guatemala’s Refugees tells the story of that process. In this moving and provocative book, Clark Taylor describes the experiences of the survivors-both those who stayed behind in conditions of savage repression and those who fled to Mexico where they learned to organize and defend their rights. Their struggle to rebuild is set in the wider drama of efforts by grassroots groups to pressure the government, economic elites, and army to fulfill peace accords signed in December of 1996. Focusing on the village of Santa María Tzejá, Taylor defines the challenges that faced returning refugees and their community. How did the opposing subcultures of fear (generated among those who stayed in Guatemala) and of education and human rights (experienced by those who took refuge in Mexico) coexist? Would the flood of international money sent to settle the refugees and fulfill the peace accords serve to promote participatory development or new forms of social control? How did survivors expand the space for democracy firmly grounded in human rights? How did they get beyond the grief and trauma that remained from the terror of the early eighties? Finally, the ultimate challenge, how did they work within conditions of extreme poverty to create a grassroots democracy in a militarized society?Contents Preface Introduction 1. Torn by Terror 2. Reweaving the Pieces: Culture of Fear/Culture of Learning 3. The Contextual Loom: The Peace Accords, Civil Society, and the Powerful 4. Clash of Patterns: From Mexico and Guatemala A Pictorial 5. Resources for Reweaving: The Perils of Development 6. Human Rights: The Color of Life 7. The Gray of Frozen Grief: Resolving the Trauma of Memory 8. Tearing Still? The Army in Peacetime 9. Weaving the Future: What Needs to Be Done and How To Get Involved Appendixes A. U.S. Groups Providing Resources on Guatemala and Support for the Peace Process B. Chronology of Guatemalan History C. Chronology of the Guatemalan Peace Process Acronyms Notes Bibliography Index About the Author(s) Clark Taylor is Associate Professor of Latin-American Studies in the College of Public and Community Service, University of Massachusetts at Boston. He is also chair of the board of the National Coordinating Office on Refugees, Returnees and Displaced of Guatemala (NCOORD), and was a founding member of Witness for Peace’s Guatemala Committee.

Samuel Totten, “Genocide in Guatemala”, Encyclopedia of Genocide, Israel W. Charny, Editor in Chief; [Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1999, Vol. I; p. 281-282.

Robert H.Trudeau, Guatemalan Politics. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1993.

Benjamin A. Valentino (b. 1971), Final solutions : mass killing and genocide in the twentieth century, (Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 2004).

Contents: Mass killing and genocide -- The perpetrators and the public -- The strategic logic of mass killing -- Communist mass killings: the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia -- Ethnic mass killings: Nazi Germany, Armenia, and Rwanda -- Counterguerrilla mass killings: Guatemala and Afghanistan -- Conclusion: Anticipating and preventing mass killing.
B enjamin A. Valentino, Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. finds that ethnic hatreds or discrimination, undemocratic systems of government, and dysfunctions in society play a much smaller role in mass killing and genocide than is commonly assumed. He shows that the impetus for mass killing usually originates from a relatively small group of powerful leaders and is often carried out without the active support of broader society. Mass killing, in his view, is a brutal political or military strategy designed to accomplish leaders’ most important objectives, counter threats to their power, and solve their most difficult problems. In order to capture the full scope of mass killing during the twentieth century, Valentino does not limit his analysis to violence directed against ethnic groups, or to the attempt to destroy victim groups as such, as do most previous studies of genocide. Rather, he defines mass killing broadly as the intentional killing of a massive number of noncombatants, using the criteria of 50,000 or more deaths within five years as a quantitative standard. Final Solutions focuses on three types of mass killing: communist mass killings like the ones carried out in the Soviet Union, China, and Cambodia; ethnic genocides as in Armenia, Nazi Germany, and Rwanda; and “counter-guerrilla” campaigns including the brutal civil war in Guatemala and the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Valentino closes the book by arguing that attempts to prevent mass killing should focus on disarming and removing from power the leaders and small groups responsible for instigating and organizing the killing.

Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala ( Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 320 pp. . www.silenceonthemountain.com

Silence on the Mountain is a virtuoso work of reporting and a masterfully plotted narrative tracing the history of Guatemala’s thirty-six-year internal war, a conflict that claimed the lives of some 200,000 people, the vast majority of whom died (or were “disappeared”) at the hands of the U.S.-backed military government. Written by Daniel Wilkinson, a young human rights worker, the story begins in 1993, when the author decides to investigate the arson of a coffee plantation’s manor house by a band of guerrillas. The questions surrounding this incident soon broaden into a complex mystery whose solution requires Wilkinson to dig up the largely unwritten history of the country’s recent civil war, following its roots back to a land reform movement that was derailed by a U.S.-sponsored military coup in 1954 and to the origins of a plantation system that put Guatemala’s Mayan Indians to work picking coffee beans for the American and European market.
In 1993, Wilkinson, a recent Harvard graduate travelling in Guatemala, befriended the heiress of a coffee plantation there. Her family had abandoned the land in 1983, after guerrillas burned down the main house. Wilkinson’s frustrated attempts to discover what prompted the arson became an extensive investigation, and as the author interviewed a cross section of Guatemalans—from the former defense minister General Gramajo to eighty-year-old peasant farmers—his friend's plantation emerged as a microcosm of Guatemala’s hidden and terrible history. The author's style is taut and precise, but it is the Guatemalans themselves who speak with the greatest eloquence. After a massacre in the village of Sacuchum, where forty-four peasants had their throats slit by the Army for allegedly aiding the guerrillas, a witness describes a peasant pleading for his life before a military official: ‘Please, señor, God does not permit this,’ he cried, to which the captain replied, ‘Here there is no God! Here there is only the Devil.’” From The Nation “ [I]n other hands, this might have resulted in a simplistic polemic; but Wilkinson, who is blessed with not just considerable courage but also a strong moral compass, seemed determined to understand how it all played out through real people and real events….[T]he resulting book, in which he combines the probity of a serious historian with the literary instincts of a crime writer, winds up peeling back layers of silence and deceit in ways that are reminiscent of what Marcel Ophuls’s film The Sorrow and the Pity did for Vichy France.” From The Los Angeles Times “ Wilkinson writes after the manner of Philip Gourevitch (‘We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families’). Gourevitch’s account of the Rwandan genocide asks how a nation heals from the shared memory of trauma; Wilkinson wants to know where the memories come from and who fills the silences in the aftermath of a national catastrophe.” From Publisher’s Weekly “ Written in the vein of a Robert Kaplan travel journal, this profound book traces the history of Guatemala’s 36-year internal struggle through personal interviews that recount the heart-wrenching stories of plantation owners, army officials, guerrillas and the wretchedly poor peasants stuck in the middle. Wilkinson’s narrative unfolds gradually, beginning with his quest to unlock the mysteries of the short-lived 1952 Law of Agrarian Reform, which saw the redistribution of land to the working class. Daniel Wilkinson is an attorney with Human Rights Watch in New York. His book, Silence on the Mountain, won the 2003 PEN/Albrand award for outstanding first nonfiction by an American author.

Reports

Manuel Jesús Caravantes Pozuelos El delito de genocidio, Guatemala: 1950, 36 p.

Guatemala: Nunca Maás (4 vols) Infomre poyecto intersiocesano de recuperación de la memoria histórica, (Guatemala City guateala: Oficina de Derechos Humans del Arzbipado de Guatemala (ODHAG), 1998 See www.odhag.org.gt

Abridged one volume  translation into English Guatemala: Never Again! Recovery of Historical Memory Project (REMHI): The Offical Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999), 332p.

On April 24, 1998, Monsignor Juan Gerardi Conedera, presented the Recuperation of Historical Memory (REHMI) report, which documented torture, kidnappings, massacres and other crimes against humanity committed largely by the Guatemalan Army during the 1960-1996 armed conflict. Two days later he was bludgeoned to death in the garage of the parish house of the San Sebastián Church, Guatemala City.

Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio: Comisión para Esclarecimiento HistóricoFebrero 1999  [Guatemala: Memory of Silence: Commission for Historical Clarification]

Five years ago on February 25, 1999 the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) presented a report finding acts of genocide were committed between during 1981 and 1982 in four regions of Guatemala. A Summary of the report in English can be read online . The full Spanish version is also online Comisión para Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH). Note especially the section” “Capítulo II: Volumen 3 – GENOCIDIO” The 3-member commision included Christian Tomuschat, of Germany (Chief Commisioner), a former UN Independent Expert for Human Rights in Guatemala and Otilia Lux de Cotí and Alfredo Balsells Tojo of Guatemala.

Informe de un genocidio : los refugiados guatemaltecos, [Report of a Genocide: the Guatemalan Refugees] 2a ed, (Mexico, D.F. : Ediciones de la Paz, 1983), 82 p.

Minority Rights Group. The Maya of Guatemala. London: Minority Rights Group International. September 1994.

Minorities at Risk Project report “Indigenous People of Guatemala” by Pam Burke 7/17/95 Michelle C. Boomgaard, 9/22/00 Adam Connolly, 06/17/02

Minorities at Risk Project, University of Maryland. Includes a chronology since 1991 and a risk assessement. www.cidcm.umd.edu/inscr/mar/data/indguat.htm

Decision of the Spanish Supreme Court concerning the Guatemala Genocide Case. Feb. 25, 2003 .  (English) or Spanish full text 58 pages, PDF file Tribunal Supremo

Commemoration

Annual Remembrance:

February 25 – Día Nacional de la Dignidad de las Víctimas de la Violencia (National day of Dignity of the Victims of the Violence ) On this day in 1999, the Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) presented it’s report, Guatemala, Memory of Silence finding acts of genocide were committed between during 1981 and 1982 in four regions of Guatemala. A Summary of the report in English can be read online . The full Spanish version is also online Comisión para Esclarecimiento Histórico (CEH). Note especially the section “Capítulo II: Volumen 3 – GENOCIDIO” Also read on this website: Resources on Genocide in Guatemala and News Monitor on Guatemala 2001-2004

Rio Negro Massacre Memorial. On March 12, 1995 a memorial was Unveiled in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz on the 13th anniversary of the 1982 Rio Negro Massacre. On that date, 177 women and children were raped, tortured, mutilated and dumped in a mass grave. Constructed by the survivors of the Rio Negro massacre as a testimony to the atrocities committed by the Guatemalan army and civil defense patrollers against their family members. Built before the 1996 Peace Accord, the steel and cement monument (three meters thick, four meters wide, five meters high, sunk two meters into the ground) was built to prevent its destruction. A previous Monument to Truth, unveiled in April 1994 was destroyed two weeks after it was erected. On March 1, 1995, a second plaque that was being readied for the March 12 unveiling was destroyed in a Guatemala City workshop.

Film

Grupo de Apoyo Mutuo. “Gam Pide cumplimiento de las recomendaciones de la CEH.” 1999.

Guatemala: Personal Testimonies (1982, 20 min icarus film. Produced by Skylight Pictures

Indian survivors of massacres mounted by the army bear witness to human rights abuses of General Rios Montt’s government. www.frif.com/cat97/f-j/guat.html

Guatemala : Roads of Silence Guatemala [ Caminos del silencio] (1998, 59 min) In Spanish with English subtitles

Presents a testimony of the daily life of the thousands of Indians persecuted by the Guatemalan army, of their social organizations, and of their struggle for dignity and the right to live.

MayanTV is the first public access television station in Central America as well as the first in Latin America. http://mayantv.webcrayon.com/

Escuela Guatemalteca de Communicación (EGCs) mission is to contribute to the empowerment of the Mayan people through the establishment of their own media outlets.

Dicovering Dominga Produced and Directed by Patricia Flynn. Website for the July 2003 Episode of POV (Point of View) on PBS television

On March 13, 1982, Denese Becker was a nine-year-old Maya girl named Dominga living in the Maya highlands, when the Guatemalan army entered the village of Rio Negro. By the time the soldiers left, hundreds of people, including 70 women and 107 children, had been massacred and dumped in a mass grave. They became part of the estimated 4,000 to 5,000 men, women and children killed in the Rio Negro area by military forces from 1980 to 1983. The Rio Negro villagers had been marked as “insurgents” for resisting their forced removal to make way for a World Bank-funded dam. Dominga was one of the unaccountably “lucky” survivors of the massacre at Rio Negro. Placed in an orphanage, she was adopted two years later by a Baptist minister and his wife from Iowa. Living in Iowa, Denese Becker was haunted by memories of her Mayan childhood. A quest for her lost identity in Guatemala turns into a searing journey of political awakening that reveals a genocidal crime and the still-unmet cry for justice from the survivors.

Survivor testimonies

Jesús Tecú Osorio “They took them one by one to a ravine that was about twenty meters from where we were. We heard shots, screams and crying.”

Dominga Sic (Denise Becker) * b. 1971 “She told me to take the baby and run and never look back.”

See book by Ignacio Bizarro Ujpán (above)

Guatemalan Survivor “[T]hey grabbed me by the shirt, right here, at my chest. “Look up,” they said.”

Websites

CALDH- Centro para Acción Legal en Derechos Humanos Center for Human Rights Legal Action, est. 1989, 1994)

also the English website www.justiceforgenocide.org

Peace Pledge Union (est. 1934, London) Study guide on genocide for student, teachers and parents, includes material on past genocides in NAMIBIA, ARMENIA, UKRAINE, the HOLOCAUST, CAMBODIA, GUATEMALA, RWANDA and BOSNIA www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/

Fundación Myrna Mack www.myrnamack.org.gt Works for the modernization of the judicial system and to facilitate the building of democracy. Founded in 1993 and named after anthropologist Myrna Mack Chang (1949 – 1990) who was assassinated in September of 1990.

El Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL)Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) is a non-governmental organization (NGO), founded in 1991 by a group of prominent human rights defenders in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Fundación Rigoberta Menchú www.rigobertamenchu.org Fundación Rigoberta Menchú Tum (FRMT) The Rigoberta Menchú Tum Foundation A foundation created by Rigoberta Menchú after winning the 1992 Nobel peace prize. The foundation works to promote peace, human rights, and development, especially as it concerns indigenous people. For the 1995 elections, the foundation launched a project to promote voter participation and turnout.

Misión de Verificación de las Naciones Unidas en Guatemala (MINUGUA) United Nations Mission to Guatemala www.un.org/Depts/minugua OR www.minugua.guate.net see also www.un.org/Depts/dpko/dpko/co_mission/minugua.htm

Plataforma contra la Impunitat a Guatemala www.pangea.org/impunitat

Comisión para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Guatemala www.codehuca.or.cr

Guatemala Human Rights Commission www.ghrc-usa.org

Network in Solidarity with the People of Guatemala www.nisgua.org

National Security Archives Declassified Documents Relating to U.S. Intervention in Guatemala.  An excellent source. Contains declassified State Department and CIA documents related to the U.S. backed coup of 1954 and years of military repression since then.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), 1979, opened 1993, Wash, DC Includes the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies and the Committee on Conscience www.ushmm.org W ebsite Includes several events on genocide in Guatemala

Yale University Website on the Guatemalan Truth Commission : “The Guatemalan Truth Commission & The US Role”; “An Overview of the Guatemalan Clarifications Commission”; “Guatemala: A History of Violence.”

A Human Rights History of Guatemala. Provides a brief overview of Guatemalan history from the stand point of human rights; extends through pre-Columbian times, the conquest, and the present with special emphasis on modern political repression and military abuses especially of indigenous people; builds a case that the abuse of human rights in Guatemala is genocide against the indigenous population.

Other Links on Guatemala provided by Amnesty International .  Links compiled in 1998.

Violence against Returning Refugees (1996). Human Rights Watch report about government’s and military’s treatment of people returning from refugee camps.

1997 Human Rights Report: Guatemala. U. S. State Department report on the human rights situation in Guatemala since the Peace Process.

Organizations in Guatemala. Hot links to numerous mass organizations in Guatemala, including popular groups that oppose the military, support indigenous rights, and protest disappearances.

Guatemala: State of Impunity. Amnesty International for the period March 1994 to October 1996, examinaing the issue of granting broad amnesty and immunity from prosecution to the military leaders responsible for the nearly 200,000 murders in Guatemala.

That was your big “Independence Day” story

By Greg Szymanski, JD
July 5, 2010

The breaking news from the Gulf is there is “No News”, never will be any news and, better yet, it is now against the law in the U.S. to get close to the news.

Especially, of course, in the Gulf of Mexico.

If you haven’t heard, don’t worry because you will never hear the truth in the Gulf anyway!

And U.S. lawmakers made sure of that, slapping the First Amendment in the faces of all Americans but doing it on July 4th of all days!

Here is the gist of the story, explained on the Natural News web site as reported by CNN.

I am giving you a few paragraphs only in order to give you time  to head for greener pastures because there ain’t no putting this Republic back together again, especially  if we can’t even find out why it’s falling apart.

Read a few paragraphs and then I suggest you get your passport in order before it’s too late and your boots get stuck in the oil sludge:

As CNN is now reporting, the U.S. government has issued a new rule that would make it a felony crime for any journalist, reporter, blogger or photographer to approach any oil cleanup operation, equipment or vessel in the Gulf of Mexico. Anyone caught is subject to arrest, a $40,000 fine and prosecution for a federal felony crime.

CNN reporter Anderson Cooper says, “A new law passed today, and back by the force of law and the threat of fines and felony charges, … will prevent reporters and photographers from getting anywhere close to booms and oil-soaked wildlife just about any place we need to be. By now you’re probably familiar with cleanup crews stiff-arming the media, private security blocking cameras, ordinary workers clamming up, some not even saying who they’re working for because they’re afraid of losing their jobs.”

Watch the video clip yourself:

The rule, of course, is designed to restrict the media’s access to cleanup operations in order to keep images of oil-covered seabirds off the nation’s televisions. With this, the Gulf Coast cleanup operation has now entered a weird Orwellian reality where the news is shaped, censored and controlled by the government in order to prevent the public from learning the truth about what’s really happening in the Gulf.

Editor’s Note: Greg is taking a couple weeks off his radio show, The Investigative Journal. He will be  filing reports as he travels south. He just happened to leave this note for us at the Arctic Beacon before boarding his plane. He told us not to publish it but we are doing it anyway: “I plan to slick myself up and have a nice “Blackened Fish Dinner” on the Louisiana Coast.

“After that, if not arrested for trying to write a story about why the Gulf looks rather different these days, I will be heading south for a little R&R if the dinner  here doesn’t kill me first.”

Financial insiders call it “Double Dip” recession; common people know it’s the last straw that broke the America’s back

By Greg Szymanski, JD
July 2, 2010

Word has it from Wall Street The U.S. is heading towards “double dip” recession.

A scene from Black Beach Lousiana

But common folks know that type of insider fluffy language really spells Another Great Depression but this time with two “Big D’s.”

No jobs. Manufacturing Shipped to China. Foreclosures and an unstable housing market. European debt colliding with a shinking dollar.

And now the Gulf of Mexico!

Apparently for finanacial insiders this spells “Douple Dip” Recession; for the rest of us it spells, not only Great Depression, but the end of America as we know it.

Get prepared, back your bags and save your pennies. And Whatever little bit you have left in your bag of American goodies, reduced by the bigwigs to a hobo’s sack, take it with far away from U.S. borders/.

Take it far away because it ’s not going to be pretty and much worse than what is now called a “double dip” scoop of Wall Street ice cream.

In past articles, we warned how what’s going in the Gulf is anybody’s guess, looking more each day like all-out war on the American people. But one thing for sure we will soon see a mass exit from the Gulf, not only by the birds and the bees but by the people living on the shoreline.

Here is another story adding to the intrigue in the Guld sent to the Arctic Beacon from a source listed at the end of the story:

The potential magnitude of what is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico simply cannot be overstated. It is far, far worse than is being admitted and what we are allowed to see is catastrophic enough.

When a major event happens we should watch and wait to see what information comes to light before jumping in with ‘it’s this’ or ‘it’s that’. What appears to be one thing at the start can become something quite different a few days or weeks later.

But we now have had enough time to shake our heads at claims that this was just an ‘accident’ or ‘incompetence’.

Beware cover stories of ‘incompetence’, as with ‘incompetent bureaucrats’, because they are so often a veil for cold calculation. The Gulf of Mexico disaster didn’t just happen, it was made to happen.

Mother Jones magazine reported:

‘Tony Buzbee, a lawyer representing 15 rig workers and dozens of shrimpers, seafood restaurants, and dock workers, says he has obtained a three-page signed statement from a crew member on the boat that rescued the burning rig’s workers.

The sailor, who Buzbee refuses to name for fear of costing him his job, was on the ship’s bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone.

Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness’s account, Harrell was screaming, “Are you fucking happy? Are you fucking happy? The rig’s on fire! I told you this was gonna happen.’

Yes, and nothing was done because it was meant to happen.

Doesn't look good from here -- heading way south this year!

We are well aware of Halliburton, the company headed by a key player behind the war on Iraq has since been awarded a stream of no bid government contracts in the country that has transferred staggering amounts of taxpayer money into the pig trough infested by Halliburton executives and shareholders.

Lawsuits claim that the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon rig, 52 miles south-east of the Louisiana port of Venice on April 20th, was caused because Halliburton workers improperly capped the well – a process known as cementing.

Just eight days before the Gulf blow-out, Halliburton also announced that it had agreed to buy Boots & Coots for $240.4 million. Who are Boots & Coots?

The world’s largest oil-spill clean-up company which also deals with oil and gas well fires and blowouts.

What an incredibly fortunate coincidence. What a slice of luck.

Goldman Sachs sold 44 per cent of its holdings in BP, a total of 4,680,822 shares worth the best part of $300 million, in the weeks before the Gulf disaster that sent BP shares plummeting, and Tony Hayward, BP’s disgraceful chief executive, is reported to have sold  his £1.4 million shares in BP a month before the explosion. The profit allowed him to pay off the mortgage on his mansion. How nice.

As with the pre-9/11 ‘put options’ (bets) on the stocks of American airlines falling, so we have gathering evidence that some people knew what was coming in the Gulf of Mexico from an oil rig operated by one of the biggest companies on the planet – British Petroleum.

Merely drilling where BP did, with the known pressures from within the earth, was asking for trouble.
But what’s the deal? How does an oil-poisoned ocean and devastated coastal communities (and potentially others far inland and around the world) benefit an agenda for total global control?

Oh, in so many ways.

Firstly, we need to appreciate the almost unimaginable scale of what is happening – facts that BP and the Obama-fronted American government are desperate to keep from us.

Recent reports have claimed to quote the opinions of scientists who are too fearful to be publicly named because of the consequences for their lives and careers.

They estimate the release of oil from under the Earth’s crust at between 80,000 and 100,000 barrels a day. That is 4.2 million gallons or 15.9 million litres a day potentially pouring into the Gulf.

This aligns with a leaked internal BP document that says that in a ‘worst-case scenario’ up to 100,000 barrels a day could be released into the ocean.

The scientists were quoted as saying that the ’sandblasting’ of the oil, toxic gases, rocks and sand will be continually making a bigger hole for the oil and gas to escape. In other words, the situation is getting worse not better and it is already a catastrophe of immense proportions for those immediately affected – a number growing rapidly by the day.

The scientists predicted that the drill hole will expand beneath the wellhead and so weaken the area on which the wellhead stands until it is pushed off the hole to allow the oil to flow with no restrictions at all.

Should that happen the consequences are unthinkable.

The scientists said that billions of barrels of oil will be released before the pressure in the enormous cavity five miles below the seabed calms and finds balance and then water would pour into the cavity to replace the oil.

They said that the temperature at that depth, some 400 degrees, will turn the water to steam creating a pressure that will lift the ocean floor. They estimate that this will create a tsunami of between 20 to 80 feet, or even higher, that will bring the poisoned ocean ashore to leave great tracts of land uninhabitable and without life.

American investigative journalist, Wayne Madsen, writes that satellite imagery withheld by the Obama administration shows that ‘under the gaping chasm spewing oil at an ever-alarming rate is a cavern estimated to be around the size of Mount Everest’. This information, he says, has been given an almost national security-level classification to keep it from the public.

Now, we have heard many doomsday scenarios before in many circumstances that have not manifested, but even if such shocking predictions do not happen on that staggering scale there is no question that the world changed on April 20th 2010 when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded.

Just a look at the map of the Gulf region reveals the potential effect on enormous numbers of people in Mexico, the Caribbean and the southern states of America with so many living on or close to the coastline …

But the scale and potential of what we are seeing goes way beyond even the Gulf. The scientists mentioned earlier say that the oil has now reached the Gulf Stream, with a current at least four times stronger than in the Gulf of Mexico itself, and this could help to direct the oil all over the world in the next 18 months.

It is the Gulf Stream that keeps the United Kingdom and parts of Europe much warmer than they would otherwise be at their latitude, but it will also act as a oceanic conveyor belt delivering the oil from the Gulf Mexico across the Atlantic.

The toxic oil and gas are being added to by the lethal ‘dispersant’ used by BP to (theoretically, for public consumption only), ‘disperse the oil’. They are using Corexit 9500 and Corexit 9527A which are so toxic they have been banned in Europe, although Europe is likely to get them anyway via the Gulf Stream.

Corexit is manufactured by a corporation called Nalco, once part of ExxonMobil, and the current leadership includes executives from Exxon and BP. The European Union Times said of Corexit:

‘A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with “total destruction” …

… Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.’

You might think at first hearing that it is blatantly crazy to use Corexit when there are some 12 other less toxic and more effective dispersants approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Two of those on the EPA list ‘were found to be 100 percent effective on Gulf of Mexico crude, while the two Corexit products rated 56 percent and 63 percent effective’.

Well, yes, it is crazy, these people are crazy, but there is method in their madness, as we will see.

Killing the sea to ’save’ the sea.

Corexit also causes the oil to drop below the surface so giving a false impression of how much oil is in the water.

Environmental engineer Joe Taylor has publicly warned BP to stop using Corexit immediately or everything in the sea is going to die. It is worth watching this short report on his findings before we move on, because we are getting to the prime question – why is BP doing everything it can to cause maximum destruction.  (If the picture did not transfer the link is still here.)

The key words spoken by Joe Taylor were when he said that if he knew the information about the effect of Corexit then so did BP – ‘They have a lot of chemists who are a lot smarter than I am, and they know this.’

Why would BP be knowingly causing as much environmental devastation as possible? The answer to this question is the same as the answer to these:

Why was the booming operation supposed to protect the beaches from the oil so pathetic and ‘inept’, as exposed here by an expert … BP Fails Booming School 101? (link included below)

Why is the BP ‘clean-up’ operation so disorganised, unmotivated and basically non-existent that BP employees are working for little more than two hours a day on beach cleaning, as exposed here in The Short Film BP Doesn’t Want You To See …?

The answer to all those questions and so many more is this: we are looking at an environmental 9/11 that was made to happen and those behind this carnage want it to be as extreme as possible to get maximum impact in terms of their goals of control and chaos.

A vacuous, ludicrous and mendacious man called Bob Dudley, the BP managing director, said from the comfort and distance of Washington DC that ‘for BP, our intent is to restore the Gulf the way it was before it happened.’

Meanwhile, back here on Planet Earth, life as they have known it is already over for the coastal communities of the Gulf region with the tourist and fishing industries devastated or destroyed. People are now being forced to earn a livelihood working on ‘clean-ups’ for the same BP that has wreaked this havoc on their lives and families.

What’s more, they are told by this merciless corporation that they must work amid shocking levels of toxicity without respirators because they don’t want to ‘alarm the public’ by seeing such pictures – the same reason why BP has basically introduced its own martial law in the region to stop the full and horrific extent of the disaster and its global potential coming to light.

The health consequences for those ‘clean-up’ workers already exposed to this deeply toxic environment without protection will already be horrific, as we shall see. But BP couldn’t shiv a git – just as the US government and the New York authorities couldn’t give a shit about the rescue workers on the toxic World Trade Center site after 9/11.

Already, even the (pathetic) mainstream media has reported that 70 people in Louisiana have been admitted to hospital with symptoms of toxin poisoning. Many beaches have been closed because of toxins in the air and water and people are reporting breathing problems and skin rashes and lesions.

One report said that crops as far north as North Carolina have been damaged by toxic rain, while oil has been falling in the rain near the Louisiana coast.

This is only the beginning, too, as the oil continues to gush in ever-greater amounts to be met by the lethal Corexit in ever-greater amounts, and that whole deadly toxic cocktail is going to fall as rain on communities far from the coast.

Add to that the hurricanes, tidal surges and other weather phenomena and you can understand why those nameless scientists are writing off land up to 200 miles from the shore as becoming too toxic to support life, let alone a human society. See the story about Nigeria at the end of this article for some of the consequences that oil pollution can bring.

Two other effects of so much oil in the Gulf of Mexico could be to heat up the sea, so causing more hurricanes and super-storms, and making the process of producing rain from seawater less efficient, so affecting rainfall on the land.

The major target of this engineered horror is America and its economy – the powers that be are seeking to destroy the United States militarily and financially to bring this ’superpower’ to its knees so it can be absorbed into a world government dictatorship via a North American Union.

BP has said that massive quantities of methane are leaking with the oil, along with large mounts of lethally toxic hydrogen sulfide, benzene and methylene chloride. This has the potential to trigger mass evacuations.

John Kessler, oceanography professor at Texas A&M University, discovered on a ten-day research expedition what he called ‘astonishingly high’ levels of methane within five miles of the stricken rig – ‘an incredible amount’ – and maybe as much as a million times greater than normal.

It is very sobering to look again at the towns and cities of the Gulf coast given a report by investigative journalist, Wayne Madson, that quotes ’sources’ inside the US government, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the US Army Corps of Engineers as predicting a ‘dead zone’ within 200 miles of the rig caused by a combination of methane and toxic rain containing Corexit.

Madsen says:

‘Plans are being put in place for the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Mandeville, Hammond, Houma, Belle Chase, Chalmette, Slidell, Biloxi, Gulfport, Pensacola, Hattiesburg, Mobile, Bay Minette, Fort Walton Beach, Panama City, Crestview, and Pascagoula.’

Imagine evacuating that many people and maybe more of the tens of millions of people who live on or within 200 miles of the Gulf coast, but then that would be just the scale of disaster and compulsion that would allow FEMA, a major asset of the Control System to impose its long-planned martial law on enormous numbers of people.

FEMA and the military have been preparing for this for years with exercises for just such a situation involving oil pollution, but all records of this were expunged from FEMA-related websites in the weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion.

Anything that affects America on such a scale would have a knock-on effect economically across the world – another bonus for the cabal which is seeking to create maximum chaos on every front to instigate the global problems to which it will offer its global solutions – a world political and military dictatorship.

 www.patriotsprepare.com   and   www.exiledbroadcasting.com

and www.governmentisaparasite.com

Santa Catarina lose two lives and 64 homes;  San Pedro la Laguna) one 10-year-old girl and 50 homes lost

By Bill Muirhead
July 1, 2010

LAKE ATITLAN – Twice now in five years tropical storms have devastated the Lake Atitlán region. Hurricane Stan in October 2005 ended the rainy season with massive destruction of property, loss of lives, homes,and crops, and the tragic interment by mud of 800 or so residents of Cantón Panabáj, Santiago Atitlán.

Last month tropical storm Agatha opened the rainy season in a fury, catching us all by surprise, two days of heavy rainfall capped by 36 hours of
torrential downpours. Then suddenly on the afternoon of May 29th, almost simultaneously throughout the region, the earth reached its saturation point and things fell apart.

Cerro Lec, a huge land mass above Panajachel, has been falling steadily in the direction of the Rio la Vega for over a year.

Floods From Tropical Storm Agatha

Late afternoon the 29th much of the Cerro gave way in a gush, clogging La Vega with mud. When the mud broke free again, La Vega raged to the Rio San Francisco, which swelled over its banks and roared into town down main- street. Mud, tumbling boulders, and angry waters swept away homes, inundated others, and removed a section of the bridge to Santa Catarina Palopó.

Jaibalito’s tiny river went mad, wiping out 15 homes and damaging others. The school of Jaibalito, still threatened by the river and rock-slides,is now closed, probably forever. In a village where most study only three years and few beyond the sixth grade, no one now studies at all.

San Antonio Palopó, the hardest hit, lost 60 or more homes and 20 lives; Santa Catarina, 64 homes and two lives; Cantón Xepacoral (San Pedro la Laguna), 50 homes and a ten year old girl; and in San Juan de Argueta and Chipiacul, Patzún, a life each. Tzununá, San Marcos la Laguna, Tzamcháj (Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán) and Xajaxac, Xibalbay, Chaquijyá, and especially Pixabaj within the municipality of Sololá suffered mud-slides and heavy property
losses.

Pixabáj in normal times possesses a natural beauty unsurpassed around Lake Atitlán. The setting is idyllic, almost fairyland. But in Pixabáj May 29th 150 or more homes fell or were
snatched up by the Rio Candelaria. Pixabáj´s center was trashed. But upriver in sector Chuichicaste the damage was worse. Still further upriver in sector Maria Tecún the whole world appears to have caved away.

Evidence of mud and rock-slides now scar every mountainside. Miraculously no one died. Had the calamity happened at nighttime when everyone would have been asleep, a disaster the scale of Panabáj October 5th 2005 might
have occurred. But the Torment peaked just before nightfall. Maria Tecún residents had opportunity to scramble to houses atop the mountainsides, where cypress, fruit trees, and the contours of the terrain protected them from what was about to transpire. There they watched in surreal, agonized horror as one mud-slide after the other crashed their hillside homes and those of their neighbors to the valley floor, where the Candelaria gobbled up
the remains while undercutting the remaining riverside homes.

The lead image for this blog shows Finca Pampojilá as it appeared in January of this year, actually as it looked right up until the Torment. I include this photo because it demonstrates the beauty of the Finca as it was, and because my images of Pampojilá´s coffee harvest can never be recaptured. Agatha scarred the face of Pampojilá forever.

Hurricane Stan wreaked destruction there too.

Stan destroyed many of the Finca´s homes, proved the others unsafe for human habitation, and prompted the relocation of Finca residents to a new suburb, Colonia San Andrés, so named because the ancestors of Finca residents came to Pampojilá in their youth from San Andrés Semetabaj to pick coffee, and stayed. Colonia San Andrés sits at the foot of Volcán Tolimán within the pathway of the flow of water, sand, and mud that inundated San Lucas in 1956. In a year in which mud and rock-slides streak down all of Volcán Tolimán´s surface, San Andrés (historically, Zanikya) remains vulnerable.

Still Digging Out In Lake Atitlan

My acquaintance with Finca Pampojilá began with visits to the Colonias Pampojilá and San Andrés. I first attended Pampojilá´s harvest in January of 2007 and have since spent most December and January days within the cafetal. Other than my family farm, Pampojilá is the only agricultural property of which I know virtually every inch. I love the Finca, its people, and the sense of fellowship shared in the harvest. I know the homes of the
workers. So, when a friend called me from San Lucas the afternoon of the 29th to tell me of Pampojilá´s devastation, I resolved to see for myself.

Sunday morning I walked from Panajachel to Santa Catarina in waist-deep mud, washed off in the lake shore, and then caught a launch to San Antonio. From there I took a private launch to San Lucas, bought pants and changed in the market, took a moto-taxi to the edge of town, and then began walking to the Finca. On the afternoon of the 29th just below Santa Alicia, an enormous gorge had opened up beneath the highway, swallowing it up along with a vehicle carrying Agatha´s first two casualties.

Boulders, mud, and a flood of water raced toward the Finca destroying everything in its path. As I walked along the roadway the following day along with dozens of others on foot, many of them in tears, I could not believe my eyes. Rocks, logs, and mud dominated the landscape. Adeep ravine
had ripped through that part of the Finca called El Campo and then deposited its fill in a wide band in the center of the Finca, destroying almost every home. Mud-flows buried two Finca residents. I had known them. I watched in horror as men searched for and extricated the bodies. I continued on to Colonia Pampojilá to find my friends there safe.

Back in San Lucas I visited the colonias affected by the storm.  Even with ordinary rains the soccer field and its adjacent colonias flood. This past January water and mud entered homes in La Unión, Nuevo Amanecer I and II, La Esperanza, Espencer, sector El Campo, San Gregorio, and Pachavac during a freak storm in the middle of the dry season. May 29th the cerro above the Amanecers, Pachavac, and La Esperanza and below Cerro Iquitiu let loose in a series of mud- and rock-slides, burying or crushing many houses, and
covering a family of six. Again I knew the victims. Rocks hurled into homes, destroying an entire section of Colonia San Gregorio. Many houses within the affected colonias can probably be cleaned out and repaired, but should never again be inhabited.

San Lucas hurriedly established shelters in its churches, school houses, and salons to house temporarily those 1,500 or so displaced by the storm.

I visited the shelters for two days delivering first bread, then apples. I knew everyone. Most pick coffee in Pampojilá. The women wash clothing in San Lucas´ bays El Relleno and Las Conchitas. I write this the 28th of June, almost a full month after the Torment. I’ve just spent another three days in
San Lucas, visiting the Finca and shelters once again.

This trip I began at the lower limits of the Department of Sololá in the last town of San Lucas before entering Suchitepéquez, Comunidad San Juan la Laguna, part of Quixayá.

I took a lady a piglet I’d bought on the way in the Friday market of Godinez, something she’d been wanting for a long time. San Juan Mirador illustrates the dislocations of Mayan communities by natural disasters. San Juan´s people originally came from San Jorge la Laguna on the north side of Lake Atitlán,
between Sololá and Panajachel. They moved a few generations ago to near Pochuta to cut sugar cane. There they founded the first San Juan Mirador. In 1991, an earthquake destroyed their town, and they relocated to their present location.

Across the road from San Juan near San Geronimo Miramar (Suchitepéquez) is a historical location, Paquip, whose name no longer exists. The story of the people who came from Paquip is interesting in that it connects to the history of two other north shore communities of Lake Atitlán. Paquip s tale is one of natural disasters and dislocations. In 1547 the people of Paquip, for reasons unclear, left their homeland to settle near Cerro de Oro, Santiago Atitlán. The owner of the property on which they settled evicted them in 1580. They then came to the north side of Lake Atitlán, contracted to plant corn for the
alcalde (mayor) of Patzununá, and settled in the Payan Chicol Valley (another name lost to time), modern day Jaibalito.

The Rain Continues At Lake Atitlan -- all photos by Muirhead

There they joined with peoples from Sololá and on April 26th, 1584, a day after the feast day of San Marcos, they founded the town of San Marcos
Paquip. Sometime later the town came to be known as San Marcos la Laguna. Mud-slides and inundations destroyed this original San Marcos on three occasions, in 1688, 1702, and 1721. Finally, in 1724, the alcalde (mayor) of Sololá gave the disaster victims land formerly belonging to San Pablo la Laguna in the location of present-day San Marcos la Laguna. Having not learned their lesson, they once again settled in the flood plain, where
they were flooded out again. They finally moved up the hillsides to the present-day Barrios I and II.

I arrived at San Juan by bus. Travelling back to San Lucas in the back of a pick-up truck I was better able to assess the damage below Pampojilá. Near La Nueva Providencia and Colonia Xejuyú, deep ravines had nearly taken out the highway, where previously ambled tiny streams. As I passed Totolyá, I mused again thoughts of human dislocations caused by natural disasters. Totolyá presently sits along the highway on land formerly belonging to Finca Santo Tomas Perdido. It used to be part of Finca Providencia and sat at the foot of
Volcán Atitlán. On September 12, 2003 a mud-slide buried 47 people, 12 from one family I know well.

My recent trip to San Lucas began with hope and a sense of renewal. The road to the Coast was open. Heavy machinery was hard at work restoring Pampojilá. Men and women planted pine and cypress in the massive land-slides of Pachavac and Nuevo Amanecer I, which had only weeks before buried dozens of homes, and that of La Esperanza, and which had entombed a family of six.

The mood in the shelters was positive. Try to magine living in a school gymnasium on tiny mats scattered along the walls and sharing three or four
bathrooms with fifty or sixty other families for a month. Then try to imagine smiling and laughing through it the way the people of San Lucas do. 700 or more Luqueños remain in shelters, but they have reason for cheer. Already, the Parrochia of San Lucas Tolimán under the direction of Father Gregorio has purchased land and begun construction of 200 houses near the schoolhouse of Cantón Pacóc.

Smiling In the Face of Disaster

My trip began with hope but ended with a sense of fatalistic gloom and despair. During the night of Saturday the 27th rains pounded San Lucas Tolimán without mercy. With daybreak they did not halt. They continued their relentless assault throughout the day. San Lucas´ Sunday market, normally so lively and gay, was somber. Everyone looked to the sky for reprieve, but none was in sight behind the darkened clouds. I returned to Jaibalito by
a very circuitous route with an acute sadness I could not shake. The rains stopped last night, but I don´t know if anything bad happened in San Lucas, San Antonio, Pixabáj, or the many other villages for which I fear the worst. I did hear high winds tore aluminum sheeting off the roofs of houses in Colonia San Andrés during the night. I write this the evening of June 28th. It is pouring rain. I´m seated at the Posada of Jaibalito, where several families living near the river have sought refuge and sit huddled together, cold, wet, and scared. I have no idea what´s happening to my friends around the lake, and I feel powerless.

Guatemala is a magnificently beautiful country. Guatemala is also a precarious place in which to live, a land of earthquake, eruption, inundations, and mud-slides. Deforestation and the extension of slash-and-burn agriculture up the mountainsides were indeed problems contributing to natural catastrophes even before the Conquest. But the true lords of the region, the ancient Maya, were far superior guardians of the environment than is modern man.

They revered animals, plants, and trees. They called their land Guatemala,
¨land of many trees¨, and named their villages in honor of trees or other aspects of nature. The Maya saw trees as a resource, one to be preserved for future generations. Agatha was in part a natural disaster, largely outside of man´s control. But, in part, the disaster was man-made. Deforestation is one culprit. The fires that raged for weeks on Volcán Tolimán in January and February 2009 created conditions for the mud-slides that ravaged Finca Pampojilá on May 29th.

Intensive horticulture along and above the Rio Candelaria can be blamed for the devastation in Pixabáj. The onion fields above Santa Catarina and San Antonio contributed to the disasters in those towns. The construction
of new roads to Sololá from Tzununá and Santa Cruz makes future landslides for those villages a certainty.

Shamefully, for San Antonio Palopó the culprit is also greed. Hurricane Stan in 2005destroyed only one house in San Antonio. In May of 2009 during a fairly normal rainstorm, four houses fell. Above San Antonio between Chipop and Patzáj is perhaps the best long view of the lake. For that view, life has been sacrificed. A new hotel and ¨development¨ on that spot, San Antonio del Lago, has reconfigured the topography and drainage of the landscape, and has created rivers and cataracts where they previously did not exist. Unless construction stops and the developers reverse the damage, San Antonio appears a doomed city.

The situation around Lake Atitlán and throughout much of Guatemala is at crisis levels. Help is desperately needed, but where to send help is a problem. Municipal and departmental officials in Guatemala tend to divide emergency aid among themselves like spoils. Foundations and institutions help those in need, but also help themselves mightily. I´m sure there are legitimate foundations around.

I just don´t know of any. Nor do I know enough to criticize specific foundations, other than one I´m sure is dishonest. I will say that Father Gregorio Shafer of the San Lucas Mission is a man of character, nobility, and
scrupulous honesty. Even opposing religious within San Lucas say so. They also say,however, that there are local employees within his organization who are not so honest, ones who are out for personal gain. Nevertheless, the many accomplishments of the Mission on behalf of the poor and displaced over the years can not be denied.

Nor can it be ignored that the San Lucas Mission has gone right to work in the current crisis to work to relocate Agatha victims.

A warning: a German foundation named Ready-to-Help, which is ostensibly working in Jaibalito, is not, at least not yet. The foundation has conducted fund-raisers in Germany to help the people of Jaibalito. The foundation´s web-page announces proudly that ¨the good news is your donations have arrived in Jaibalito;¨ they have not.

The organization´s web-page claims to be working to restore a particular household which was damaged during the Torment. That work is actually being done by Hans Schaefer, the owner of the Posada of Jaibalito, the most trusted and respected man in the village, with generous contributions
from friends. Hans is a meticulous book-keeper and will account for every Quetzal given him on behalf of the people. In the end, he will reach deeply into his own pockets to make up the difference to pay for work needed to restore the town.

The problem is he´s also an extremely humble man and will step aside for others to take the credit for his many sacrifices and accomplishments on behalf of the people. In short, help is needed, and the two men I trust most to give that help both share variations of the same surname, Father Gregorio Shafer of The San Lucas Mission and Hans Schaefer of the Posada of Jaibalito.
If you really want your dollars to help the Maya devastated by Tropical Storm Agatha, contact the San Lucas Mission or Hans.

Editor’s Note: This detailed story was prepared for Save Lake Atitlan Mission to give you an eye-witness look at what’s really happening after Agatha at Lake Atitlan.

International help has been slow in coming. The little money we have collected here at Save Lake Atitlan Mission will be brought in the first week of July and used to help peole in need.

Muirhead, through the above-mentioned names, will be the original contact people to make sure the money is used for those who really need it. A substantial donation will also be given by one of the founders of Save Lake Atitlan Mission, Margaret Hollander.

Also, we will continue to raise awareness through articles and radio shows about the plight of indigenous people in Guatemala, the value of which is sometime hard to be measured in dollars.