Haiti and Afghanistan

Although I will not be along as things move forward, there is movement on a couple of fronts with InternetBar.Org.

Ruha is in Haiti arranging the Haiti Sings competition and getting, finally, the contract signed for the Haiti PeaceTones collection. Haiti sings is an "American Idol" type competition for Haitian performers - the prize will include the opportunity to open for a Haitian professional musical group when they play in New York later this year.

Jeff is off to Afghanistan next week to try to put together the final pieces of the land registry project. He's got appointments with movers and shakers in the legal community, the academic community, the aid worker community, and the government, so our hopes are reasonably high that we can get the project off the ground. Selling rule of law in places like Afghanistan can be a bit of a lift, but, as I have argued to Jeff and others, it may be possible for the war lords and government officials in Afghanistan to make more money faster by establishing rule of law in the land rights and ownership area than they could make through graft and corruption. We'll see how that idea sells in Kabul.