[bksvol-discuss] Re: OT-Sort of Benetech in Guatamala
- From: "Estelnalissi" <airadil@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 31 May 2008 23:22:50 -0400
Hi, Amy, thanks for sending along the link to that wonderful story.
Lissi and I watched it together and both found it to be an extremely moving
portrayal of a struggle to find out both what happened during a violent period
in the history of that country and to gain the information necessary to obtain
hopefully some justice for the many crimes that were committed.
There is a transcript of an interview with Jim on the site as well, giving a
bit of history of Benetech and specifically how he came to start this
particular project.
As for the project on land mines: I don't have a whole lot more detail in my
head at the moment, but Lissi says that she recalls that during the time when
Jim received the MacArthur Genius Award, it was reported that he developed the
most sophisticated equipment to date for detecting land mines. I imagine you
could get more details at the Benetech site or by just Googling Fruchterman and
MacArthur Award, or something like that.
Evan
----- Original Message -----
From: Amy Goldring Tajalli
To: Bksvol-discuss
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 2:25 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] OT-Sort of Benetech in Guatamala
Friends,
There is a new form of an old program on PBS on Tuesday Nights: Frontline
World and This past Tuesday included a segment on the work Jim Fructerman and
Benetech have been doing with helping turning 60 to 80 million pages into a
usable archive that can explain what happened to an unnumbered group of
"disappeared people" are called desaparecidos and executed persons the
documentation of which had been missing until recently. And there are many
people who would like it to disappear again along with the people working on it.
The interview with Jim is available at:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/guatemala704/interview/fruchterman.html
The full story is available at:
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/guatemala704/
with the pictures that lead to each segment beginning with Guatemala's
history of Violation of Human Rights. Jim explains why and how they were able
to get the funding of a project that is reminiscent of the Archives of the Nazi
documentation of the Holocaust [my comparison]..
I found it mind boggling but the work that is being done will enable millions
of people to find out what happened to their loved ones and for the Guatemalan
Government and Human Rights Commissions to find justice for the desaparecidos.
Forgive me for an inadequate description of what you will find on these pages
and the sections of the program itself. It is an amazing thing that Benetech is
doing and will make an enormous difference to Guatemala and the world.
Amy
omsm
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