Pambazuka News 553: Nato occupies Libya; Famine, genocide and the Senegalese Spring

For millennia, people have coped with drought in the Horn of Africa, comprised mainly of drylands. Yet today, more than 13 million people there are starving because of political instability, poor government policies and failure to invest in the world's poorest people, say experts here in Changwon. Two billion people, half of whom are extremely impoverished, live in drylands around the world, according to Anne Juepner of the Drylands Development Centre at the UN Development Programme (UNDP) in...read more

Fourteen people were rushed to hospital after what police say is a grenade was lobbed into a bar in Nairobi around 1am on Monday. Anti-terrorism police have sealed off the bar - Mwaura's club - following the blast that comes soon after Kenya's recent offensive into neighbouring Somalia in pursuit of the al Shabaab militia. Witnesses said two of those removed from the bar after the blast appeared dead, but police told Nation.co.ke they could not confirm any deaths.

Senior officials of the Hawks and the South African Police Services are conducting an illegal 'rendition' with their Zimbabwean counterparts, the Sunday Times has reported. The newspaper reported that the government agencies arrest 'suspects' and illegally send them across the Beit Bridge border to be murdered. Rendition is the illegal kidnapping and transfer of prisoner from one country to another.

A small number of photographers and poets in Kenya have started the second phase of a creative project called ‘Koroga’. Photographers create stunning, ‘alternative’ images of Kenya and poets add short text to create slides, the ‘Koroga’, that say something imaginative, something new. All of the very accessible and diverse slides are ‘free to view’ online.

The international acclaim for the Libyan revolution is being tempered by growing revulsion at the treatment of the bodies of Muammar Gaddafi and his son Mutassim. The UN has called for a full investigation into the circumstances of the dictator's death. Video footage recording the minutes after Gaddafi's capture last Thursday, when his convoy came under Nato and rebel attack, shows an alive but injured Gaddafi pleading for his life.

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