Z-com

Independant left-wing media institution Zcommunications have a spiffy new site featuring writers such as Tariq Ali, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, George Monbiot, Howard Zinn etc…

…one of the great newspapers of the internet, print, and video. You get more in one visit than hours of thumbing through voluminous newspaper voices of rapacious power. The range of good journalism, writing and scholarship on ZCom is astonishing: from the pen of the well-known to eyewitness reporting of ‘citizen journalists’. John Pilger
LINK

Intyatyambo

When Udo visited the other day, he updated me on the level of progress made at the Intyatyambo community project. If you don’t remember, Intyatyambo is a South African community project for disadvantaged kids and Udo has volunteered his services as a builder, handy-man and fundraiser. Since becoming involved he has helped raise ￥4 million which has already been spent on fulfilling the children’s basic needs (food and clothing) and on buying three professionally converted shipping containers with a clean bathroom, hygienic playrooms and bedrooms to replace the tin shack that they spent their days in before. However, they are still very far from their goal of raising enough funds to build a new care centre. Here’s a short video about the people behind the project:

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/qLl6pDMUPKg" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Learn more at the Intyatyambo website and keep up-to-date at the Intyatyambo Blog.

Crisis in Kenya

And here’s a message from avaaz.org on the current crisis in Kenya:

It’s the New Year – but for the people of Kenya, a rigged election threatens genocide. There’s something we can do to help before it’s too late, so I thought you might be interested –

Last week, Kenya held a national election marred by vote-tampering. President Mwai Kibaki has claimed victory after pressuring the electoral commissioner and the challenger Raila Odinga has called for protests. Violence has broken out across the country, with gangs of machete-wielding youth terrorizing the population leaving hundreds dead. Suddenly, this hopeful country could be sliding toward genocide.

We mustn’t sit back and watch this nightmarish scenario unfold — but we need to act fast. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has flown into Nairobi, joining the African Union in an effort to broker a power-sharing agreement and review the election results. If talks are to succeed, governments around the world must avoid prematurely recognizing a fraudulently elected leadership and locking in their power. That’s where we come in.

You can click the following link below to send a note to the government, asking them to withhold recognition of a new Kenyan president until agreement is brokered and the election results are independently reviewed:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/kenya_free_and_fair/98.php?CLICK_TF_TRACK

It’s too early to tell how far the situation in Kenya could deteriorate — but we just can’t afford to wait and find out.