Highlighted E-newsletters & Articles from 2025

Written By Grahame Russell

We share these highlighted e-newsletters from 2025, and some previous ones, that are related directly and indirectly to the work and struggles we fund and support in Guatemala and Honduras.

This is the first email in an end-of-year series. Stay tuned for the upcoming emails!


Fundamental Inter-Connectedness
Local-to-national-to-global / Past-to-present

In our view, all efforts to build communities and societies based on real equality and balance with all life forms and the environment, from Central America to Palestine, from Venezuela and South America to Africa, are local-to-national-to-global struggles at the same time, that play themselves out, almost always, in the context of economic and military imperialisms of the past and present.

EARTH, A PALE BLUE DOT
by Carl Sagan

Dec. 8, 2025
U.S. destruction of Honduran democracy almost complete
Dana Frank and John Perry write of the fall-out of the destructive intervention of the U.S. into the electoral process and release of drug-trafficking cartel leader and former President of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Dec. 3, 2025
U.S. stomps on Honduran elections and pardons former drug-trafficking President of Honduras
Grahame Russell writes: “we are devastated at Rights Action, though not surprised, by the U.S.’s crushing of Honduras’ fragile democratic process and pardon of the drug-trafficking former President, all of which will make life worse again for the majority poor population.”

Nov. 25, 2025
Ramon Cadena out of jail, for now, in Guatemala!
After 11 days of relentless campaigning led primarily by family members and human rights activists in Guatemala, Ramon Cadena, widely respected jurist and human rights lawyer, is out of jail and now on “home arrest”.

Nov. 24, 2025
Say no to U.S. threats and interference in Honduran elections
“U.S. officials in the White House, State Department and Congress have been nurturing a propaganda campaign by the Honduran rightwing press and organizations against the progressive forces in the country reminiscent of Cold War propaganda.” (Honduras Solidarity Network)

Nov. 14, 2025
‘Up to the U.S. to decide if it violated international law with Caribbean boat strikes’, says Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister
In an actually honest statement of how Canada and, generally speaking, countries in the U.S.-led Western Bloc usually operate, Canada’s Minister for Foreign Affairs said “it is within the purview of U.S. authorities to make that determination” whether it is a violation of international law or not that the U.S. has murdered at least 80 people in 20 military strikes on small boats off the coast of Venezuela and Colombia.

Nov. 8, 2025
U.S. seeking regime change in Venezuela. Canada waiting in the wings, quietly supporting
“An unprovoked US military assault on one of Latin America’s largest nations appears likely in the near future.” (The Nation)
“To any clear-eyed observer, the boat strike was an illegal slaughter of non-combatants, carried out in the context of US lies designed to justify aggression against a regional adversary. Yet the Canadian government has remained silent.” (Canadian Dimension)

Oct. 2025
13 BRAVE GIANTS
How We Won the Landmark Hudbay Minerals Lawsuits in Canada and the Mynor Padilla Criminal Trial in Guatemala, and at What Cost!
Rights Action’s report about the story, told in full, of these inter-connected lawsuits in Canada and Guatemala.

Oct. 2025
Podcast: Blueprints of Disruption interview with Grahame Russell about Canadian mining imperialism, Hudbay Minerals lawsuits & Guatemala's 13 Brave Giants

Oct. 29, 2025
Guatemalans confront new coup attempt by corrupted Judicial Branch & Traditional Elites
Since President Bernardo Arevalo and Vice-President Karin Herrera came to power in January 2024, the Judicial Branch of government together with Congress – both controlled by the “pact of the corrupt” traditional elites – have blocked virtually every reform effort of Arevalo’s government. The Judicial Branch uses the legal and penal systems as “lawfare”, as tools of repression to attack, oust from office, jail pending trial, or force into exile any one they see as in opposition to the economic, political interests of the traditional elites - and of course their global business and political allies.

Oct. 20, 2025
Nobel “Peace prize” handed to Maria Machado, Venezuelan part of global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism
As the U.S.-led, Canadian and Western European bloc continues to support and legitimize Israel’s genocide and ethnic cleansing destruction of Palestine, it is (depressingly) fitting that the Norwegian Nobel Peace Prize gang chooses Maria Machado.

“Machado isn’t a symbol of peace or progress. She is part of a global alliance between fascism, Zionism, and neoliberalism – an axis that justifies domination in the language of democracy and peace. In Venezuela, that alliance has meant coups, sanctions, and privatization. In Gaza, it means genocide and the erasure of a people. The ideology is the same: a belief that some lives are disposable, that sovereignty is negotiable, and that violence can be sold as order.” (CODEPINK)

Oct. 17, 2025
Corrupted Attorney General’s office in Guatemala continues to undermine precedent setting “Military Diary” crimes against humanity case

Sept. 8, 2025
Sexual violence and rape as tools of repression
The New York Times Magazine published a photo-essay about the struggle for truth and justice of 36 Maya-Achi women in Guatemala. With the Asociación Bufete Jurídico Popular (Rabinal Community Legal Clinic), the women brought their rape and sexual violence case to Guatemalan courts and won historic convictions against the material author perpetrators of these crimes against humanity that were committed as part of the genocide of the Achi people carried out by U.S. and Western-backed Guatemalan regimes, 1970s-1980s.

Aug. 26, 2025
U.S. and Canadian tourism investors at center of land conflicts and criminalizations of Garifuna people in Honduras

With the risk of over-simplification, the greatest threat to the Garifuna people – their way of life, lands, culture, and existence - is the global tourism industry (gated communities, cruise ship industry, all-inclusive resorts, timeshare condos) trying to operate along the Caribbean coast, wresting control of Garifuna lands step by step, sketchy or outright corrupted property “sale” by “sale”.

Aug. 20, 2025
Guatemalan commanders referred to genocide as “Palestinization” of Mayan population”
Chris Hedges discusses with Jennifer Harbury U.S. and Western-backed genocides in Guatemala and Palestine.

Aug. 15, 2025
Leocadio Juracan, Indigenous land and rights defender in Guatemala, illegally jailed by corrupted Attorney General’s office, police and military
Leocadio is a well-known land and rights defender, and well-respected member of Congress (2015-2019).

July 31, 2025
“Our Genocide”: Israeli Human Rights Groups Accuse Israel of Palestine Genocide
B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights (Israel) have concluded that Israel’s violence against Palestinians is a “coordinated action to intentionally destroy Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip.” “Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.”

July 30, 2025
Corporate Extortionist Pressure on Honduras Causing Conditions of Forced Migrancy
Companies and investors from the U.S., Canada and beyond are making U$20 billion in extorsionist “international arbitration” claims against Honduras. Most of these investments took place during the years of the U.S. and Canadian-back, “open for global business” narco-dictatorship in power from 2009 to 2022.

July 22, 2025
Growing list of political prisoners in Guatemala
Luis Pacheco, Deputy Minister of Sustainable Development-Ministry of Mines and Energy, arrested on bogus charges, as global mining industry pushes ahead with ‘business-as-usual’

May 20, 2025
Yet another indigenous land defender - Misael Mata - killed near Fenix mine in Guatemala
By Rights Action

May 13, 2025
Xinka people say a resounding, reverberating NO to Pan American Silver mining in Guatemala
By EarthWorks and MiningWatch Canada
“The State has discriminated against us, criminalized us, repressed us and even denied our existence in order to carry out the mining project. If this project continues, we would practically be condemned to disappear as a people,” said Marta Muñoz, spokesperson for the Xinka Parliament.

Apr. 23, 2025
Hazardous machinations of Canada’s mining elite in communities across Latin America
By Jennifer Moore

Grahame Russell
Next

A stern silence from Canada about illegal U.S. sanctions on Canadian ICC Judge