BBC World Service

On December 26th, the BBC World Service will broadcast a new piece by me, commissioned for the one-year anniversary of the murder of Kenya's democracy.

Full details of how and when you can hear it, on radio as well as online, on my Calendar.

KPTJ

On December 27th last year, 20 Kenyan activists held an emergency meeting in Nairobi to plan a response to the civil coup we had witnessed the day before.

That meeting was the genesis of Kenyans for Peace, Truth and Justice, a coalition of over 30 Kenyan and East African legal, human rights, and governance organizations, together with ordinary Kenyans and friends of Kenya.

KPTJ maintains that there can be no peace without justice - political, economic, and social - for all Kenyans. Justice requires that we face the truth of our history, and of the 2007 election, to address the deep chasms and inequities in Kenyan society.

During the post-election crisis, KPTJ generated vital professional analysis, backed by verified data, of the electoral fraud and ensuing country-wide violence.

KPTJ's reasoned position statements were used by the UN, EU, US State Department, Senate, and Congress, and AU, to bring the Kibaki camp to the negotiating table. KPTJ also mobilized progressives within Kenya, the Kenyan Diaspora, and the Pan-African movement, to actively campaign for a just resolution to the crisis.

Throughout 2008, KPTJ has been central to the monitoring, implementation and enforcement of the mediation agreement. My work as a Kenyan activist is firmly grounded in KPTJ's analysis and framing.

You can read KPTJ reports and statements here.

The Shoes Heard Around The World

A quatrain that nails it (or should that be "shoes it") perfectly, from Yoshie Furuhashi, critical.montages@gmail.com

As the POTUS spoke nonsense into the void,
His final insult to Iraqis unfurled,
There the embattled journalist stood,
And fired the shoes heard round the world.*

Muntadar al-Zeidi's shoes are the Lexington and Concord of creative anti-imperialist resistance in the age of YouTube.

* With an apology to Emerson.

Luna Press Calendar

One of my favourite rituals for the turning of the year is beginning a new Luna Press Calendar.

Dedicated to the Goddess in Her many guises, it is a work of art, a labour of love, that ruins you forever for any other calendar.

It reminds me that time is spiral, not square.

It charts the year in 13 lunations - moon cycles - rather than the conventional 12 months of the Gregorian calendar. Shows each one in spiral patterns of days of the moon, with the times of rising and setting. And a wealth of other information, art, goddess-lore.

The cover image for 2009, is Prithvi (protectress), by artist Jamie Hogan. Golds, reds and oranges that make me think of an Indian wedding sari. It shows a goddess with the body of a tiger, and two heads - one, crowned, at the front, and a smaller one looking backwards, on the tail.

The artist says:

I wanted to celebrate an earthy goddess with animal instincts, strong and statuesque, calm but able to protect the earth during all its cataclysmic changes. The head on the Goddess' tail signifies multiple powers of perception. We too need to look ahead and back, while being open to Her strength in all its forms.

See it on the Luna Press site.