I had a quick word with Ciaran who is planning to cycle from Lands End to John O Groats in a week at the end of July. The aim is to raise money for HIV-AIDS care work in South Africa. So far he has raised over �1000 in sponsorship commitments. He is using a CDROM from Tricia Sibbons at the Bishop Simeon Trust which includes Michael Parkinson�s visit to the Kwase-Kwaza orphanage. I mailed Peter Chatterton to suggest that he contacts Ciaran to see if he needs a specially tailored CDROM � there is nothing Peter would enjoy more than putting this together.

The other big GFD issue I have on the go is kitting Robert up with a digital camera so that he can record his trip to SA � I bought an Olympus with a big card in NYC and I have raised about 70% of the cost so far from 4 donors. Someone suggested to me that if this opportunity was put to HTSM it would be easy to fill in the gap with extra donations. I decided to do an update for Robert in a letter and to throw in the 10SS CD which I still haven�t properly launched in that community.

I used the very latest version (15 tracks) and I included the (abandoned) version of Cleveland Live at the URC which also has Paul�s Lullabye on it. So that�s an opportunity to introduce him to the Lullabyes project and mention to him the appearance of the 2nd Lullabye on Belgian radio.

I said to Peter C that I thought that the Music for the Highveld brand was undergoing a migration to broaden its �creative services� offering. There are a couple of new relationships in the pipeline. The heart so far has been in a purchase offering in a particular coloured box � backed by the technology/marketing bundle that Peter and I happen to have � but as a single supply chain. I think we are now looking at a development where the shopwindow aspect is expanded to one or two other products which suit the brand value � so that is expanding the supply chain. But we may also get into different production techniques. On top of that we are expanding our concert promotion activities. No wonder it all takes time. Our ambitions are needless to say boundless given that the conventional recording company business model is broken.

A lot of my effort goes into sustaining the currency of the brand through the News and Links pages at www.kwase-kwaza.org. This is quite high risk � as I decide what stories to put up � it would be easily to get out of line with the constituency when the world is changing so fast. This is one of the reasons why I keep a keen view on the international breakdown of the stats. It is clear that there is a cluster of interest in Belgium/Italy/France � not so much Germany and Spain � which I would guess is quite values-driven. At the same time there has to be a universal platform � eg across the Atlantic. Basically the stories have to say �on the button, up with the game� but also take a slant which is in tune with the sharp end activities which we are promoting.

Within the UK I think I can afford more of an oppositional stance � you only have to think of Clare Short as the tarnished icon of the dvelopment policy elite. I am turning over in my mind whether the anti-war movement might have really potent e-mailing lists.

I think the volume is continuing a gradual month by moth expansion. There was a pulse around Feb 15/16 which hasn�t happened in the last 10 days but the underlying trend is still there I think.

Although world events are chaotic and alarming my view is that you have to keep making sense of them. When I was in UN HQ in NYC three weeks ago my offering in the book for comment was that "Peace starts when we respect our own intelligence" and I really believe it.

Today's thought - and there is a good article in the KK News section about this - is that the US/UK planners didnt think carefully enough about the complex nature of Iraqi nationhood. A secular state which can stand up in a prevailing climate of Arab humiliation. The internal rebels really got burned when the US abandoned the Southern Uprising in 1991 and so in their world they are not going back to simply roll that story on as if nothing has happened in the interim. And I expect like everyone else (except UK US generals) they have read and digested Stalingrad.