The International Press Institute (IPI), the global network of editors, leading journalists and media executives in over 120 countries, has condemned the recent decision by the authorities in Zimbabwe to suspend the operating licence of The Tribune newspaper. According to IPI's research, on 10 June, the government-appointed Media and Information Commission (MIC) suspended The Tribune's operations for twelve months for allegedly breaching the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA).

Journaliste en danger (JED) has learned that the Ministry of Press and Information issued a directive, on 12 June 2004, warning the Congolese press to "respect editorial guidelines to the letter during this period of crisis." "During this period of disturbing events (the situation in Bukavu, the failed coup d'etat in Kinshasa), the handling of news is of great strategic importance and is linked to the defence and internal security of the state," cautioned Press and Information Minister Vital Kamerhe.

The village of Nyenasi is like most villages in Ghana; there is no electricity, library, post office, or telephone service, the major sources of information are the interactions on market days at the district capital Twifo Praso, and on portable radio sets which run on dry cell batteries. It is such communities that many development experts want to reach with ICTs.

The Association of Progressive Communications has spent the last two years advocating for civil society involvement in international ICT (information and communications technologies) policy-making processes. Now 10 APC members have created national ICT policy portal websites in their own countries in a joint initiative. The portals which are all uniquely adapted to address each country's particular situation all use free software that allows content-sharing in different languages and between multiple information databases hosted in different parts of the world.

This invaluable guide to organising winning and profitable fundraising events is the culmination of over twenty years of experienced fundraiser Jill Ritchie's voluntary and professional involvement in event fundraising both in South Africa and abroad. It features over 100 fun, innovative and novel fundraising ideas with planning, preparation, pitfalls, potential, tips, hints and variations.

The sixth edition of International Justice Tribune, the independent newsletter reporting on international criminal justice, is now available. To subscribe or file a free trial subscription form (in English or French), please visit the website at: http://www.justicetribune.com

The Resource Alliance has announced a 3-day regional workshop on Resource Mobilisation in Uganda on 9th – 12th November 2004. The workshop has been organised in partnership with the Uganda Debt Network. If you are involved in local resource mobilisation in Eastern Africa, then don't miss this opportunity to update knowledge and fundraising skills. This workshop will address the challenges and opportunities of resource mobilisation in this region and will consist of a wide range of practical skill development workshops and inspirational plenaries. You will also have the opportunity to meet with experts on a one-to-one basis to discuss issues which are of specific relevance to your working environment.

Only the ideologically twisted would deny Ronald Reagan his due. He was a wildly successful president, accomplishing a remarkable amount of his agenda.

He entered office in 1980 determined to block advancement for black Americans, to halt the sluggish march towards equality for American women, to make America walk tall again by beating up tiny poverty-stricken nations, to allow insatiable greed and ruthless personal ambition to reap lavish rewards, to fire up the economy through trillions of dollars in defense expenditures, to invite industry to desecrate the environment, and to legitimate a morality in which any means justified his ends.

Notwithstanding his unparalleled laziness, ignorance and immersion in fantasy, in all these areas his administration triumphed, a splendid role model for conservatism in the modern world.

The new values were never in question. This was conviction politics. One of the very first acts of the Reagan administration was to cast the only vote against the World Health Organization's code of ethics on feeding 3rd world babies with instant formula prepared with contaminated water.

The world was Ronald Reagan's movie set. History will debate his role as the man who ended the cold war. But as president, death was the Gipper's co-pilot. Morning in America meant that the United States could aggress around the world at whim, recklessly flouting both American and international law, disdaining such outmoded liberal constraints as honesty, legality, democracy and resolutions of the United Nations. The multi-faceted immorality of the Iran-contra scandal was one direct consequence.

Under him was assembled a team of bellicose conservative cold warriors---CIA director Bill Casey, Oliver North, and an entire semi-secret team of ex-CIA agents, ex-Pentagon officials, fascist Cuban exiles, professional killers and international drug traffickers. State terrorism was the order of the day. The Reaganites organized a succession of secret wars and open attacks on very small nations who paid an appalling price for the unswerving principles of conservatism.

The first target for violent regime change was Nicaragua (population 3 million), in the process causing unspeakable horror as well to hundreds of thousands of Hondurans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans whose soldiers the Americans trained in the finer points of torture. He then sent the Marines to Lebanon (population 3 million) to demonstrate that Americans could go wherever they damn well chose; 241 of them died in a widely predicted attack on their barracks. A subsequent CIA plot to assassinate a Muslim leader allegedly linked to the attack didn't quite work out; it missed its target but caused collateral damage to 280 dead and wounded Lebanese bystanders.

Two days after the Marines were blown up, needing to show that no one pushed the US around, Reagan ordered 7000 US troops to invade Grenada (population 95,000), a Caribbean island about 3/4 the size of PEI. As in Lebanon, CIA intelligence proved somewhat faulty: 19 American soldiers were killed and 115 injured, some by "friendly fire". For this gallantry and valour, 8612 US army medals were awarded, some to soldiers who never left the States.

In besieged Angola (population 8 million), Bill Casey of the CIA teamed up with the South African apartheid government he so admired and succeeded in making that country, like Nicaragua, a total basket-case, while tens of thousands of Angolans perished miserably. In the Persian Gulf, an American destroyer attacked without provocation or reason a regular commercial Air Iran flight, killing 290 people; no American apology or reparations have ever been offered.

At home too, conservatism worked its magic. Poverty bloomed. 14 million more Americans lived below the poverty line when he retired than when he was elected. Almost one in four American children in 1988 lived in poverty. The enforcement of civil rights for blacks in housing, voting, employment and education almost ground to a halt. Serious reactionaries were appointed to courts at every level to entrench the rights of the privileged for generations to come. The President travelled to Bitburg, Germany, to lay a wreath at the grave of SS soldiers who, he explained, were victims of the Nazis "just as surely as the victims of the concentration camps". He was a great friend of Israel's extremists and the powerful Jewish-American neoconservative elite adored him.

The old Gipper never lost his faith in Gipperish. Almost his last act in office was to ask Congress to increase the swollen defense budget by another $5 billion and cut the same amount from child nutrition programs and medical insurance for the aged and the poor.

His country loved him. The tributes and tears flow. His truths go marching on.

* Gerald Caplan is a commentator on public affairs

* Please send comments to

Will Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) change life in rural areas of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific (ACP)? Will they make village life more attractive for young people? Or are they just not appropriate, too expensive, or not available at all?

ACP-EU invites entries from those who
*are nationals of an ACP country
*are aged between 18 and 30 years
*are members of an organisation active in rural youth development issues
*have ideas on how ICTs can help to improve youth livelihoods in the rural areas of their country

Black and anti-racist groups have reacted furiously to the revelation that thousands of people from Africa and Asian countries are to be barred from entering Britain. Quotas are to be introduced on the numbers of visitors under the working holiday scheme from countries such as Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Kenya after Home Office officials detected abuse of the system.

The African Millennium Initiative for Science and Technology (AMIST) has created an online database to enable collaboration between African scientists in Africa and the diaspora.

South Africa is celebrating ten years of democracy - a period during which the country has shown progressive leadership, including explicitly targeting information and communications technology (ICT) as an enabler of socio-economic development. In its re-election campaign this year, the Government promised to focus on poverty alleviation and job creation. But, ironically, the Government's legislative efforts affecting new technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) are actually working against the development goals it seeks to achieve.

Isis-Women's International Cross Cultural Exchange (Isis-WICCE) was the winner of the Gender and ICT Award presented by GKP and APC WNSP in the category "National and Local Outstanding Multi-stakeholder Initiatives", reports the May edition of Pula, the Newsletter of the Association for Progressive Communications Africa Women (APC-Africa-Women). The winning initiative focuses on recording and telling the little-known stories of women in situations of armed conflict in Uganda and other African nations. Since 1997, Isis-WICCE has documented the experiences of women in such situations in 10 countries in Africa through its networks.

Google is planning to launch itself into the field of free electronic messaging. The service Google is putting in place, under the name of "Gmail", is being tested out on a small number of users.

Lucien-Claude Ngongo, deputy editor of the weekly newspaper Fair Play, has been detained in the DRC capital Kinshasa for a week without charge, according to local press freedom group Journaliste en Danger (JED). Local journalists say Ngongo has been questioned about an article he wrote denouncing corrupt practices by an expatriate businessman.

ARTICLE 19 Global Campaign for Free Expression has welcomed the Access to Information Bill tabled by the Ugandan Government but signalled that more work is needed to bring it in line with international standards. "On the whole, the Bill represents a positive effort to operationalise the constitutional guarantee of freedom of information. ARTICLE 19 particularly welcomes the provisions on the duty to publish information whenever this is in the public interest, and the protection granted to 'whistleblowers'. At the same time, the Bill still fails to conform fully to international standards on freedom of information."

On March 01, this year the Tanzania Development Gateway (TzDG) of the Economic and Social Research Foundation (ESRF) organized a one-day workshop on the Internet Development and the Role of Media in Promoting Open and Inclusive Information Society. Aloyce Menda, the Coordinator of Journalists' Union for Science & Technology Advancement in Africa, presented the paper available through the link below on how the media in Tanzania can promote local content development to enhance inclusive information society in Tanzania.

Reporters sans frontières (RSF) has condemned the harassment by the authorities, particularly by the security forces, of journalists who are taking a stand for press freedom. The organisation also protested the arrest of six journalists from the daily "Al-Azmina" over a damning report on Sudan's financial and economical situation. "The journalists have tried to resist official pressure and stand up for freedom of information by creating a committee to defend press freedom and by submitting objections to a new press law that was submitted to Parliament by the president of Sudan for ratification," RSF said.

Rose Lukanu Tshakwiza, a journalist with Congolese National Radiotelevision's (Radiotélévision nationale congolaise, RTNC) Lubumbashi station and a local Radio France International (RFI) correspondent, have been receiving death threats since 25 May 2004. The threats were reportedly received from anonymous phone callers claiming to be members of the youth branch of the Union of Congolese Federalists (Union des fédéralistes congolais, UNAFEC), a party whose national president is also justice minister.

"History is replete with instances of good concepts weakened by vague definitional parameters and the concomitant blurring of focus. This is equally true in the case of the notion of access to information. A good starting point is the observed variations in the title of legislative instruments – ‘Access to Information’, ‘Freedom of Information’ and ‘Right to Information’." You can read more at the resource page on access to information at the anti-corruption website, Coris.