Soft Lit

I realized today that I have to stop kidding myself that the New York Times suffices for a person trying desperately not to become a member of the status quo. Beyond human rights, we have to think about who makes our clothes and how our food is prepared. If the migrant worker is being paid a fair wage or protected against pesticides, but also did he flee his country because of a war we helped to fund with blood money?
The catalyst to this realization was the quality literature I just encountered in the Center for Global Education house in Managua (on the corner is Daniel Ortega’s house, the president who is part of the FSLN, the party of the revolution and the only revolution to succeed in Central America).

Drawing from their extensive library of CIA and other government declassified documents, movies, documentaries, books, magazines and newspapers. Here are some suggestions:

Of course, start with the New York Times and work from there.
If you want to buy any books, please use Betterworld.com. ¨Better World Books collects and sells books online to fund literacy initiatives worldwide. With more than two million new and used titles in stock, we’re a self-sustaining, triple-bottom-line company that creates social, economic and environmental value for all our stakeholders. It funds third worl d literacy, is environmentally safe, and has free shipping for new and used books. It is the ideal Amazon.


The Guardian Weekly newspaper ¨gives a global view on the week's international events by combining comment and analysis from the daily Guardian newspaper with features from the Observer, the Washington Post and Le Monde. It is read in over 100 countries around the world by an interesting and diverse group of people. The blue section of the site features articles written or commissioned by our site editor, as well as Guardian foreign correspondents and Guardian Weekly subscribers around the world. All articles are linked by the common theme of reporting the experiences of individual people. If you yourself know of an experience worthy of inclusion, you can submit an article to the site editor for consideration.¨

Finally, The New Internationalist is an independent magazine that is ¨the people, the ideas, the action in the fight for global justice. the New Internationalist is renowned for its radical, campaigning stance on a range of world issues, from the cynical marketing of baby milk in the Majority World to human rights in Burma. ¨



I have to go now. I have 31 minutes before our tour of Managua, and have to read the Human Rights issue of The NI and ¨From the Maquila to the Mall.¨