Kenya Stockholm Blog

Seminar On Kongo At Bohusgatan On 22/November

You are hereby invited to a seminar on the situation today in Eastern Congo where we shall discuss what is happening and what we in the rich world can do to bring a change.

The situation there is very critical with a dramatic escalation during the recent days. People are running from their homes escaping from armed groups who are killing, plundering, torturing and raping the civilians. There are several armed groups and troops in the area among whom armed groups belonging to the rebel leader Laurent Nkunda, the Hutu militia groups, the regular Congolese army and according to unconfirmed rumours troops from neighbouring countries. The humanitarian situation in the area is very critical with shortage of food, medicine and an increasing number of refugees.

There is a UN peace-keeping force in the country but the current situation is much beyond their capacity and we do not see any sign of improvement in the very near future.

Saturday 22 November 2008, at 14.00, Bohusgatan 25, (T-Skanstull)

Speakers include Beatrice Kidembe, a researcher from Congo in KTH

Okoth Osewe

November 17, 2008 Posted by makozewe | News & Analysis | Leave a Comment

Update: Korir Resurfaces At Tripod

Korir has resurfaced, this time at http://africanpress.tripod.com/. KSB has communicated with him on phone and he sounded very remorseful. He was however adamant that the sole reason why his site was pulled down by wordpress was because he violated terms prohibiting advertising at wordpress. He said that he doesn’t support Obama and maintained that the “Michelle tapes”, largely believed by netters not to exist, will soon be produced.

He moved to Tripod after trying to set up another API at wordpress (http://africanpressonline.wordpress.com/) which was also closed down by wordpress immediately. Mr. Korir appreciated the work KSB is doing and said that he has a lot of respect for KSB. He also thanked me for advice when he was setting up API. He said that netters should not celebrate that he was gone as he was working on his new website which, he said, will be difficult to close down.

KSB reminded him that the question of attribution, liabel, defamation and other rules applied to all web hosting services and that any site can be pulled down by a host if terms are violated. These are basic web hosting rules.

Mr. Korir promised that this time around, he will try to be more careful with what he publishes because he has already learnt his lessons with API at WordPress. He called for joint work with KSB.

Some bloggers at wordpress seem to believe that it is the responsibility of WordPress to sift through articles then approve them. This is not true. Censorship and accountability of what is published at any blog or website is the responsibility of the blogger or site admin, not word press which has no resources to follow millions of articles and media stuff posted daily by subscribers. WordPress only begins to act if there is a report after which they evaluate the level of violation. A maximum of three warnings are normally given and if the blogger continues with violations, a blog could be closed down.

Mr. Korir also said that the Rainbow foundation which he set up in 1996 and which has been getting state funds has nothing to do with American Rainbow Foundation. He said that the problem has been that he started the “Norwegian chapter” of the foundation which was confused by the main Rainbow organization which thought that Korir was involved in impersonation.

With his struggle to start afresh, it will be interesting to see how Korir proceeds because his reputation may have suffered serious damage as a result of several hoaxes which, he admitted, were meant to drive traffic to his site, probably to attract clicks for illegal adverts he posted at the blog site.

Okoth Osewe

November 17, 2008 Posted by makozewe | News & Analysis | 3 Comments