Hello ZNet Free Update Recipient,
This is the first urgent funding appeal made by Z in many years. It is very serious. You will see further information at the ZNet top page:
Z Communications, including ZNet, Z Magazine, Z
Video, and ZMI, has recently been
losing money. If we can’t reverse this trend, our current savings will last only
seven months before possible dissolution.
We are therefore
currently working to cut costs, but such gains will be modest unless we cut
major services and even whole operations.
We therefore need
your help to increase revenues.
There are two ways to help us.
First, you can make a one time
donation. To do this, you can
either connect directly to ZNet's top page
or to www.zmag.org/fundingappeal.htm
and donate easily by credit card from there.
Or you can send a donation check directly
to:
Z Fund Raising Drive
Woods
Second, you can connect to http://www.zmag.org/Commentaries/donorform.htm
and use the links there to become a ZNet Sustainer. This option gives us
recurring support and has the benefit that you receive in gratitude a daily
email commentary, access to past commentaries, and access to our forums
including Noam Chomsky and Michael Albert as frequent participants.
We hope you will agree that ZNet, Z Magazine, Z
Media Institute, and Z Video Productions are important components of the effort
to win more just conditions throughout the world and that you will therefore
help us, within your means, to continue our work.
We thank you in advance for your support,
Michael
Andy Dunn and Daniel Morduchowicz
P.S.
On ZNet we have placed more information about the
situation. And here is a personal
comment we hope you will consider from Noam Chomsky, bearing on the
issues…
Personal
Message from Noam Chomsky
"We live in an era of media concentration, vast
efforts on many fronts (political, economic, military, ideological) to insulate
state and private power from critical discussion or even popular awareness, and
to reduce citizens to isolated atomized creatures restricted to satisfying
personal "created wants." This massive and coordinated campaign has been
partially successful, but only in a limited way. The range and scope and
dedication of popular activism has also increased, all over the world, reaching
a level of international solidarity and mutual support that has never been seen
before. The basic conflicts are very old, but they have taken quite dramatic and
significant new forms, and the stakes are far higher than ever before. It is,
regrettably, no exaggeration to say that the survival of the species is at risk
-- and many others with it. We all know why.
The popular movements are the hope for a decent
future. They of course have to have access to information and modes of
interaction. In addition to alternative print and video, to a very large extent
they have relied on the internet, which allows people to escape from the
constraints of the doctrinal systems, to explore and investigate and discuss
crucial issues with one another, to plan and organize. Z and ZNet have played a
crucial role in serving all of these functions. I see that every day. I travel
and speak constantly, in this country and abroad, and spend many hours a day
just responding to inquiries and comments. I constantly discover that the people
and organizations I come in contact with are relying very substantially on Z
projects for information, discussion, and opportunities for interaction and
organizing, to an extent that is quite remarkable. It also is an invaluable
resource for me personally, in all of these respects, and also in my case for
providing a forum for intense and very constructive discussion (for me at
least), the only one I regularly participate in. And for posting articles,
interviews, commentaries, etc., of mine. I know that many others have very much
the same experience.
It is of inestimable importance, in my judgment,
that Z and ZNet continue to flourish and expand, not to mention their growing
video efforts and incomparable media school, arguably the most exciting and
instructive I have ever encountered. Again, I do not think it is possible to
exaggerate the stakes. I hope that all of us who are committed to resisting and
reversing the powerful currents of reaction and oppression and violence, and
showing that another world is indeed possible, will contribute as best we can to
ensure that the remarkable achievements of Z and ZNet will be carried
forward."
--Noam Chomsky
