US female soldiers die, suicides or murders?

This video from the USA says about itself:

Female Iraq soldier brutally killed/raped by US soldiers-1/3

Suicide or Murder? Three Years After the Death of Pfc. LaVena Johnson in Iraq, Her Parents Continue Their Call for a Congressional Investigation

Three years ago, on July 19, 2005, Army Private First Class LaVena Johnson was found dead in Balad, Iraq. Her body was found in a tent belonging to the private military contractor KBR. She had abrasions all over her body, a broken nose, a black eye, burned hands, loose teeth, acid burns on her genitals, and a bullet hole in her head. The Army labeled Johnson’s death a suicide. But her parents never believed that story. They think she was raped and murdered and are now demanding a full congressional investigation into their daughter’s death.

Part 2 of the video is here.

And part 3 is here.

By Colonel Ann Wright from the USA:

U.S. Military Is Keeping Secrets About Female Soldiers’ ‘Suicides’

September 10, 2008

Our soldiers’ families deserve better than that.

Since I posted on April 28 the article “Is There an Army Cover Up of the Rape and Murder of Women Soldiers,” the deaths of two more U.S. Army women in Iraq and Afghanistan have been listed as suicides — the Sept. 28, 2007, death of 30-year-old Spc. Ciara Durkin and the Feb. 22, 2008, death of 25-year-old Spc. Keisha Morgan. Both “suicides” are disputed by the families of the women.

Since April 2008, five more U.S. military women have died in Iraq — three in noncombat-related incidents. Ninety-nine U.S., six British and one Ukrainian military women and 13 U.S. female civilians have been killed in Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain, as well as probably hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women and girls. …

The deaths of 14 U.S. military (13 Army and one Navy) women and one British military woman who served in Iraq, Kuwait or Afghanistan have been classified as suicides.

Two Army women in Iraq (Pfc. Hannah Gunterman McKinney, a victim of vehicular homicide, and Pfc. Kamisha Block, who was shot five times by a fellow soldier who then killed himself) and two Navy women in Bahrain (MASN Anamarie Camacho and MASN Genesia Gresham, both shot by a male sailor who then shot, but did not kill, himself) have died at the hands of fellow military personnel.

Several more military women have died with unexplained “noncombat” gunshot wounds (U.S. Army Sgt. Melissa Valles, July 9, 2003: gunshot to the abdomen; Marine Lance Cpl. Juana Arellano, April 8, 2006: gunshot wound to the head while in a “defensive position”). Most of the deaths of women who have died of noncombat gunshot wounds have been classified as suicides, rather than homicides.

The Army, the only military service to release annual figures on suicides, reported that 115 soldiers committed suicide in 2007. According to Army figures, 32 soldiers committed suicide in Iraq and four in Afghanistan. Of the 115 Army suicides, 93 were in the Regular Army and 22 were in the Army National Guard or Reserves. …

[Of, officially, "suicide cases"] # — Three had expressed concerns about improprieties or irregularities in their commands (Durkin’s concerns were financial; Davis had given a seven-page deposition on contracting irregularities in Iraq the day before she died; Peterson was concerned about methods of interrogation of Iraqi prisoners).
# — Several had been in touch with their families within days of their deaths and had not expressed feelings of depression (Morgan, Durkin, Davis, Priest, Johnson). …

A few days later, the Army changed its story and told the parents of Spc. Block that their daughter had been murdered by a shot to the chest. At the funeral home in Vidor, Texas, Block’s mother noticed her daughter had a wound to her head, not mentioned by the Army. …

Our Soldiers’ Families Deserve Better

The families of slain soldiers deserve the truth about how they served and how they died. A professional military should handle each case with utmost care and concern. Tragically, in the past seven years, too many families have been faced with unanswered questions and a military bureaucracy that closes ranks against those who are trying to find answers.

I appeal to those in our military who know how these women died to come forward. Hopefully, the House Armed Services Military Personnel Subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Susan Davis, (202) 225-2040, will hold hearings on military suicides in the next two months and provide protection from retaliation for those willing to testify. …

Col. Ann Wright is a retired Army Reserve colonel and a 29-year veteran of the Army and Army Reserves. She was also a diplomat in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Sierra Leone, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the Department of State on March 19, 2003, in opposition to the Iraq war. She is the co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience“.

Military town newspaper challenges US military on murder of military women: here.

Birds of the Guatemalan Maya monuments

This video says about itself:

Resplendent Quetzal

Male and female in munincipal forest protecting watershed above Santa Maria de Jesus, Guatemala, between 1200 meters and 2100 meters. Birds were videotaped just after 12 noon.

Resplendent quetzal photo: here.

From Cornell University in the USA:

Sept. 9, 2008

CU researchers survey for rare birds among Mayan ruins

By Krishna Ramanujan

During a trip to the forests of northern Guatemala earlier this year, Cornell natural sounds expert Greg Budney and his cohorts captured the first recording of a Caribbean dove in Guatemala and one of only a handful of known recordings of the bare-throated tiger heron, which emits a “spectacular low-deep” croon.

Budney, audio curator of Cornell’s Macaulay Library, and other researchers from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology traveled to Guatemala‘s Petén region to inventory bird species and collect audio recordings at two pre-Columbian Mayan archaeological sites within the 5 million-plus-acre Maya Biosphere Reserve.

Invited by the Foundation for Anthropological Research and Environmental Studies (FARES), a Guatemalan archaeological research organization, the Cornell ornithologists recorded 184 bird species. The reserve holds one of the largest intact tropical forests in Central America as well as key Mayan archaeological sites at El Mirador and Tintal, where the Cornell researchers focused their surveys. The bird count may help with long-term biodiversity conservation plans at the reserve.

“The Mayans ruled in this area for 400 to 500 years and modified the environment drastically,” said Eduardo Iñigo-Elias, coordinator of the lab’s Neotropical Conservation Initiative and project leader of the Guatemala expedition. Budney described flying by helicopter and seeing isolated forested peaks, which were actually the ruins of huge pyramids, and white lines, or sakbej, created by ancient Mayan roads that transected the forest to connect ancient cities.

“The Mayans raised the forest floor by one or two meters for paths” that redirected water in these lowlands, created pockets of wetlands now used by water birds and altered the soil and vegetation over time, said Iñigo-Elias. The ruins have created a diverse habitat for birds and wildlife.

Budney recorded sounds of such species as the ocellated turkey, whose feathers are iridescent blue; the great curassow, a black pheasant-like bird with a yellow beak; as well as black howler and spider monkeys. The researchers were encouraged to see these birds and monkeys in large numbers because they are heavily hunted in other parts of Central America by coal miners and loggers.

“The lack of roads keeps it pristine,” said Chris Wood, a member of the Guatemala team and project co-leader of the lab’s eBird citizen-science project, through which birders update a permanent database with their sightings. “Roads are a huge predictor of species richness.”

The researchers also sighted and collected audio of many neotropical migrants, birds that breed in North America and winter in the neotropics, including the yellow-bellied flycatcher. Of the many warblers sighted, the northern parula and golden-winged warbler in particular are considered rare for northern Guatemala.

The Cornell group, which included eBird co-leader Marshall Iliff and lab research associate Thomas Schulenberg, has plans to continue working with FARES and other Guatemalan organizations to assess important conservation sites and to possibly develop a large conservation program.

The trip was partly funded through a gift to Cornell from the Wolf Creek Charitable Foundation and another gift to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology from anonymous donors interested in supporting research and conservation of the orange-breasted falcon, one of the birds that lab researchers sighted in Guatemala. The trip was also funded by FARES and the Republic of Guatemala’s Institute of Anthropology and History.

March 2012. The Wildlife Conservation Society and partners have signed an agreement that will safeguard some 80,000 acres of intact forest in Guatemala in the heart of the sprawling Maya Biosphere Reserve: here.

This video is called The Peregrine Fund Orange-breasted Falcon Project.

New research reveals the earliest evidence for corn in the New World: here.

GUATEMALA: Relentless Devastation of Mangroves: here.

UC scientists determine that ancient Maya practiced forest conservation — 3,000 years ago: here.

Ranchers, drug barons, and their destructive friends threaten a rain forest in Guatemala: here.

December 2010. Sierra Caral is the single most bio-diverse forest remnant in Caribbean Guatemala, and is an unparalleled centre of endemism for amphibians, reptiles, and insects. It is probably the top conservation priority for acquisition in the country, and possibly in the Caribbean slope of northern Central America. Seven endemic species of amphibians have recently been discovered in the region, plus the arboreal Blue Pit Viper – Bothriechis thalassinus (named for its amazing blue tonality): here.

Current distribution and population status of the Endangered Azure-rumped Tanager (Tangara cabanisi) in Guatemala: here.

10 years ago, the magic of the turquoise plumage of the Turquoise-browed Motmot (Eumomota superciliosa) inspired the creation of the Yucatan Bird Festival “Toh”; this bird species is associated with Mayan archaeological sites, and its feathers frame the reflection of the sky on the calm waters of the cenotes (sinkholes) of Yucatan: here.

Beetles ate dinosaurs

This video is called Dermestid beetles in a feeding frenzy.

From LiveScience:

Jurassic Undertakers Feasted on Dead Dinosaurs

By Stephan Reebs, Natural History Magazine

posted: 10 September 2008 08:58 am ET

BYU geology professor Brooks Britt inspects ancient bug bites on a bone from a Camptosaurus. Behind Britt is a Torvosaurus tanneri, whose bones were also munched on by bugs. Credit: BYU

Dermestid beetles are well known in forensic circles: They congregate on corpses to feed and breed, and their presence and life stage can help establish when the victim died. Some species haunt natural history museums, where they can be pests (munching the dead skin of stuffed animals) or helpers (enlisted by curators to clean bits of tendon and muscle off skeletons).

Now, new evidence shows that dermestids were recycling carcasses as far back as the Jurassic.

Working with two collaborators, Brooks B. Britt of Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, examined the 150-million-year-old fossil of a Camptosaurus dinosaur and observed that most of its bones bear minute pits, grooves, bores, and scratches. Those, the team established, are the telltale signs of dermestid larvae that tried to get at the bone marrow after the putrid dinosaur meat ran out.

The marks matched those made by modern-day dermestids and not those of any other insect scavengers, such as termites (which can consume an entire human skeleton), mayfly nymphs, or moth larvae.

After examining 7,000 fossilized bones in addition to the Camptosaurus’s, Britt says insect marks are common but often go unnoticed. Insect activity could explain some fossil mysteries, such as “dinosaur dentures” — teeth that are found side by side in perfect order but without any supporting jaw. Chances are, scavenging insects ate the whole bone away before it could fossilize.

The finding was detailed in the journal Ichnos.

Oldest webspinners from the Middle Jurassic of Inner Mongolia, China (Insecta: Embiodea): here.

Forensic entomology: here.

January 2011: The humble ginger root could be the key to conserving the UK’s largest and most spectacular terrestrial beetle – the stag beetle. Ecologists from Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of York have developed a series of new methods to monitor stag beetle numbers – including ginger lures to trap adult beetles and tiny microphones to detect sounds made by the larvae in their underground nests. Conservation efforts have been hampered until now because ecologists lacked a reliable way of monitoring stag beetle numbers: here.

Bush’s allies quit Iraq

This video is called Iraq War Protest – March 21st 2003 – Chicago.

From the Financial Times:

Most US allies in Iraq to pull out troops

Wednesday, Sep 10, 2008

The number of countries fighting in the US-led coalition in Iraq is set to fall to a “handful” over the next three months, according to a senior US official. …

The US official said that most of the 29 countries fighting alongside American and Iraqi forces would withdraw their troops this year. …

Georgia pulled out its 2,000 troops last month during its own conflict with Russia. The UK, the second-largest contributor to the coalition, still has about 4,000 troops in Iraq. …

US commanders in Iraq have called for about an additional 10,000 troops to help quell the insurgency.

See also here.

Cholera Outbreak Spreading in Iraq: here.

26 pearls found in Lebanese oyster

This video is called Oyster Fishing at Whitstable, England (1920).

From the Herald Sun in Australia:

One oyster yields 26 tiny pearls

From correspondents in Tyre, Lebanon

September 09, 2008 10:13pm

A LEBANESE woman working in a restaurant kitchen found 26 pearls in an oyster she was preparing for the table and will submit the find to the Guinness Book of Records.

Amal Salha, 50, said she was helping out her son in his Al Fanar restaurant on the waterfront in the southern port of Tyre, when she made the astonishing find yesterday evening.

“I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

“I was in the process of opening the shells when I found a number of shining pearls inside one of them,” she said. “I was so startled I screamed.

“It was so beautiful. It looked like a bunch of grapes.”

After counting them, there turned out to be 26 pearls of varying sizes. The oyster had been harvested off the Lebanese coast.

Pearl oysters are unrelated to the oysters normally eaten in Europe but Mrs Salha said they were still popular with the French and Italian soldiers serving with the UN peacekeeping force deployed in south Lebanon.

“We buy these oysters at $US10 ($12.26) dollars a kilo,” said Mrs Salha’s husband, Raymond.

“Generally we find one or two pearls but 26 is very rare.”

Oyster believed to be Britain’s largest oyster found at Devon market: here.

Oysters are getting herpes thanks to global warming: here.

Texel pearl: here.

South African toad killed by car

This video from the USA says about itself:

Listen to American Toads, Chorus Frogs and Leopard Frogs as the crescent phase moon sets in the western prairie sky.

From the Cape Argus in South Africa:

South Africa: Leopard Toad’s Trek Ends in Death on the Road

9 September 2008
Posted to the web 10 September 2008

Cape Town

So near and yet so far. After an epic journey of 3,5km that involved crossing some of Cape Town’s busiest highways, Big Mamma made it to within 200m of her vital breeding destination – only to be flattened by a vehicle at the last moment.

Big Mamma was an endangered Western Leopard Toad (Amietophrynus pantherinus) which had been living in the conservation area in the centre of Gold Circle’s Kenilworth racecourse.

She was originally found in a private garden in nearby lower Wynberg, but was transferred to the reserve earlier in 2008 because she would be safer there.

Maya Beukes, reserve manager at Kenilworth, was delighted, because although there were records of this species in the area, very few had been seen in recent years and the location of their breeding sites were unknown.

By fitting Big Mama with a small tracking device and monitoring her movements more closely, conservation staff hoped to find out more about the toad population and so ensure their long-term survival in the Kenilworth area.

The toad was kept in captivity for about three months while tracking devices were imported from Britain. During this time, she began to fill with eggs.

Last month, the device was fitted on her back and she was released in the centre of the racecourse conservation area.

For several nights she was released and recaptured and then released again to determine whether her movements were calculated, habitual or random, said Beukes.

Each time Big Mamma was released, she headed in the same direction, “which means that she managed to calculate exactly where she had to go”.

And she was apparently determined to reach her destination, travelling between 500m and a kilometre each night – at between one and two metres a minute – through very rough, uneven and overgrown fynbos and kikuyu terrain.

“She crawled, climbed and conquered obstructions that had been previously believed to be impermeable to adult toads,” said Beukes.

After her final release, Big Mama made her way across the racecourse, over both sets of three lanes of the M5 highway, across the degraded Youngsfield military base and then across busy Ottery Road.

“She was making her way down towards the Royal Cape Golf Club, where we’d already identified two breeding sites, when we lost her signal,” said Beukes.

“We searched desperately for her for three days before we found her on the third night.

“Unfortunately, Big Mamma didn’t make it to her breeding site to find a mate and release her eggs.

“She was found flattened by a car in the middle of a small side road bordering the golf club, only about 200m from her probable breeding site.

“Her story highlights the plight of the Western Leopard Toad and the incredible danger that this species faces,” said Beukes.

Pools for amphibians: here.

NATO kills more Afghan civilians

This video is called ‘Afghanistan Civilian Deaths‘.

From Xinhua news agency:

NATO bomb kills, wounds 12 civilians in E Afghanistan

KABUL, Sept. 10 — A bombing on Tuesday carried out by the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in eastern Afghan province of Khost missed the target, killing two civilians and wounding 10 others, reported by local newspaper Afghanistan Time on Wednesday.

Norwegian government breaks with Rio Tinto, other ‘unethical’ corporations

This video is called Aljazeera on Britain’s dropping of BAE Systems fraud inquiry.

From British daily The Guardian:

Investment: Norway offloads £500m of Rio Tinto shares over ‘unethical’ mine stake

· Fund acts over ‘severe environmental damage’
· Mining company defends ‘world-leading record’

* Terry Macalister

* Wednesday September 10 2008

Rio Tinto, one of Britain’s most blue-chip corporate names, has been thrown out of a sovereign wealth fund’s investment portfolio for potentially subjecting it to “grossly unethical conduct” through its involvement in the world’s biggest gold mine.

Norway’s finance minister, Kirsten Halvorsen, said yesterday that it was selling off the £500m stake held in Rio Tinto by its Government Pension Fund-Global, commonly known as the “oil fund”.

Halvorsen said the problems with Rio Tinto, the world’s second-largest iron ore miner, concerned a joint venture with Freeport McMoRan, a company excluded by the fund in 2006, at a mining operation in the Indonesian province of Papua.

“Exclusion of a company from the fund reflects our unwillingness to run an unacceptable risk of contributing to grossly unethical conduct,” she said. “The council on ethics has concluded that Rio Tinto is directly involved, through its participation in the Grasberg mine in Indonesia, in the severe environmental damage caused by that mining operation.

“There are no indications to the effect that the company’s practices will be changed in future, or that measures will be taken to significantly reduce damage to nature and the environment,” she added in a formal statement posted on the ministry’s website.

The Grasberg complex is the biggest gold mine in the world, and the third biggest for copper. Environmental groups and local people are concerned with the environmental damage caused by dumping millions of tonnes of ore waste, or tailings, into the local river system and the harm that could be done by the stored overburden. Last year, a study published by War on Want claimed that local people had suffered serious human rights and environmental abuses.

Rio Tinto, which is the target of a £70bn hostile bid by its rival miner BHP Billiton, expressed frustration at the Norwegian move. …

Ruth Tanner, campaigns and policy director at the anti-poverty charity War on Want, said she welcomed Norway’s decision to exclude Rio Tinto and hoped other funds would follow its lead. “The Norwegian government has again put its money where its mouth is to ensure a real ethical investment policy. Now other pension funds should follow Norway’s example.”

Other British companies deemed too “unethical” by the Norwegians include the arms manufacturer BAE Systems and the support services group Serco, which was removed from the fund last year because of its involvement in the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston.

A host of US companies have also been deemed off limits by the Norwegian fund, including Asda‘s parent group, Wal-Mart, the technology group Honeywell and the defence company Lockheed Martin.

The Norwegian ministry of finance also said it had considered but rejected a recommendation from the oil fund’s council of ethics to exclude the biotech seed firm Monsanto. The government chose to keep its Monsanto shares and was working with that company to bring about a “significant reduction in the use of child labour” in cotton seed production in India.

“The ministry of finance has therefore decided not to exclude Monsanto Co from the portfolio,” it said.

Halvorsen accepted that it was difficult to give precise figures on the reduction in child labour but estimates put it at 90% in one Indian state and 70% in another.

Child labour should be abolished; not just reduced. Also, child labour is not the only problem with Monsanto.

“The Norwegian people’s savings are making a difference for children,” she said. No one at Monsanto was available for comment.

The Government Pension Fund-Global invests oil and gas revenues in foreign stocks and bonds to save for when the hydrocarbons run out.

Backstory

The bulk of companies excluded from Norway’s investment programme on ethical grounds are US firms that produce military hardware. Britain’s leading arms manufacturer, BAE Systems, is also there, alongside Thales of France and Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed. The Norwegians started their ethical “sweep” in 2005 and have extended it to include mining groups such as Rio Tinto, Vedanta and DRD Gold. One of the highest-profile exclusions was US retailer and Asda-owner Wal-Mart, for allegedly breaching human rights.

See also here.

Mining in Papua New Guinea: here.

The fight against the dumping of toxic waste off the coast of Madang in Papua New Guinea suffered a setback when a court injunction against the Ramu nickel mine, which is building a pipe to dump its waste into the ocean, was reversed. A long list of incidents have occurred involving threats and attempted bribery of those involved in the court case: here.

When Cocaine and Monsanto’s Roundup Collide, War on Drugs Becomes a Genetically-Modified War on Science: here.

Roundup Birth Defects: Regulators Knew World’s Best-Selling Herbicide Causes Problems, New Report Finds: here.

What Wall Street darling Monsanto’s fall from grace reveals about the GMO seed industry: here.

Mike Ludwig, Truthout: “After nearly five years of legal and regulatory battles, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has fully deregulated Monsanto’s Roundup Ready alfalfa that is genetically modified (GM) to be resistant to Roundup herbicide. The decision squashed a proposed compromise between the biotech industry and its opponents that would have placed geographic restrictions on Roundup Ready alfalfa to prevent organic and traditional alfalfa from being contaminated by herbicide sprays and transgenes spread by cross-pollination and other factors”: here.

Monsanto pesticide found to infect plants with AIDS-like disease: here.

Chile’s September 11 remembered

This video is called “Pinochet’s crimes in Chile”.

From British daily The Morning Star:

Chile‘s September 11

(Tuesday 09 September 2008)

EVENT: An evening of Poetry and Song

JOHN GREEN recommends an evening of poetry and music to remember a fateful day in the history of south America.

In 1970, Salvador Allende became the first democratically elected Marxist head of state in the history of Latin America despite the opposition of the US government.

It was 35 years ago that Pinochet, spurred on by the US, toppled Allende’s Popular Unity government in Chile. Tanks rumbled through the streets, terrified civilians were lined up before firing squads at the National Stadium, the elected president was dead.

There were mass arrests – US intelligence put the number at 13,500 – as well as summary executions, torture and “disappearances.”

The coup smashed the hopes of many around the world for social justice and reform in Latin America. It also signalled an eclipse of hope over the whole continent, with military coups in many other countries too.

Yet the events were celebrated at Richard Nixon’s White House. A culmination of three years of covert operations, propaganda and economic sabotage had won the day.

Newly declassified US government records reveal Washington’s role. The documents describe how an angry Nixon demanded a coup, if necessary, to block the inauguration of Salvador Allende following his victory in the 1970 Chilean elections.

The documents also detail what his administration did to make the Chilean economy “scream” and spread “black” propaganda before, finally, goading the Chilean army into the 1973 coup.

Pinochet held power for the next 17 years, relinquishing control in 1990 only after arranging immunity for himself and his top generals.

US secretary of state Henry Kissinger went to great lengths to distance himself from the coup, both in testimony to Congress and in his memoirs. He directed covert funds into Chilean congressional campaigns.

CIA agents stayed close to disgruntled Chilean military officers and planted false propaganda, suggesting that the Chilean left planned to take control of the armed forces. They also poured 1.5 million dollars into Chile’s leading newspaper El Mercurio.

But the CIA covert operation was only one leg of what US officials called “a triad” of actions toward Chile. A second leg was “correct but cool” diplomatic pressure and a third leg was the “invisible blockade” of loans and credits to Chile.

The Nixon administration moved quickly and quietly to shut down multilateral and bilateral foreign aid to Chile. At the World Bank, US officials worked behind the scenes to get Chile disqualified for a pending 21 million-dollar livestock improvement credit, as well as future loans.

The mix of economic sabotage, political propaganda and army prodding worked. Allende found himself confronted by growing disorder and soaring inflation. At every turn, his policies encountered well-funded adversaries.

On September 11 1973, amid the mounting chaos, Chile’s military struck.

Three weeks after the coup, the Nixon administration authorised $24 million in commodity credits to buy wheat – credits that had been denied to Allende.

The US provided a second $24 million in commodity credits to Chile for feed corn and planned to transfer two destroyers to the Chilean navy.

Since the election of President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, those hopes dashed in 1973 have been rekindled and we are now seeing a wave of progressive governments sweeping this crucified continent at long last.

The Venezuela Information Centre and the Venezuelan embassy have decided to mark this day with a commemorative and celebratory event – an evening of poetry and music. Harold Pinter will be making one of his rare public appearances to read some new poems.

Together with Pinter will be other well-known poets from around the country as well as two from Chile and Luis Arria from Venezuela. Chilean groups Quimantu and Amigo Artista will be playing alongside blues singer Joe Wilkes and folk singer Andy Smythe as well as RubenH and Landing Sky with their Latin beat.

Other poets appearing include Dinah Livingstone, Chris Searle, Alexis Lykiard, Ian Duhig, Bill Herbert, Andy Croft, Paul Summers, Carlos Reyes-Manzo, Eduardo Embri and Luis Delgado Arria.

The event takes place at the Venezuelan embassy’s cultural centre Bolivar Hall in Grafton Way, London WC1, at 7pm on Thursday. Tickets cost £10/£8 concessions on the door. Includes a free glass of wine.

El Salvador now: here.