Robert Mugabe is going to fix all of the Zimbabwe's economic ills, brought about through no fault of his own, through the strict enforcement of price controls and the nationalization of industry...which was part of the problem I thought... but what the hell..

President Robert Mugabe has said at the opening of parliament that strict price controls will continue as Zimbabwe tries to turn around an ailing economy.

The country, once the bread-basket of the region, is suffering crippling food shortages and rampant inflation.

Mr Mugabe blamed droughts and sanctions for their economic woes and said they faced continued hostility from the UK and her Western allies.

A bill to nationalise foreign firms, including banks and mines, is planned.

Well, it hasn't worked anywhere else in the world, but Zimbabwe/Mugabe are setting the world course for sustainable development so they must know something that we capitalists do not. Of course one way is to cut down on the number of poor is to have them leave the country:

Economic refugees are arriving in neighbouring states like South Africa at a rate of around 3,000 a day.

And, beyond economic controls, a political solution also appears to be in the makes:

Talks between the ruling Zanu-PF and the opposition MDC to find a political solution appear to have stalled, our reporter says.

The MDC wants a new constitution, but the only amendment on the parliamentary agenda could extend the president's term to 2010.

For those of us in Canada and the west in general who look to the UN as some sort of moral foreign policy guide, look again. The UN simply gives legitimacy and cover to tyrants and strongmen.

The Equal Sharing of Misery

I have a post at The London Fog on the Chair of the Committee for Suatainable Development

Zimbabwe Currency: Zimbabwean dollar (ZWD) Inflation rate: 3,714 percent and rising Exchange rate: Officially, 250 ZWD per US$1; unofficially, as high as 750 ZWD to the U.S. dollar

via Instapundit

Follow the links and check out how North Korea's currency is making out ... and Hogo Chavez is running a great socialist paradise.

Canada's top doctor singled out New Democrat leader Jack Layton yesterday for "hypocrisy" for undergoing hernia treatment at a private Toronto medical clinic.

But Brian Day, president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association, was quick to note Layton is in good company.

Former prime ministers Paul Martin, Jean Chretien and Joe Clark also have been treated at private medical clinics, Day told the annual meeting of the Canadian Science Writers' Association.

And he said union leader Buzz Hargrove, president of the Canadian Autoworkers, proved a master at "queue jumping" when he got in for an MRI within 24 hours of injuring his leg.

Read the rest

First the United Nations brought human rights to Libya.... now they are teaching Zimbabwe about sustainable development... this is the most ridiculous letter to the editor I have seen in a long time:

UN posting may give Zimbabwe real incentive to improve

National Post

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Re: The UN's latest, editorial, May 14.

One remarkable effect of the rotating chairing of UN committees is that it gives compelling reasons for errant regimes to imagine themselves becoming responsible custodians of world standards. The developmental worth of this system can be seen when these states learn to adopt maturity and stewardship.

Libya was forced to think about the meaning of human rights when it became chair of UN Human Rights Commission. This resulted in some profound policy epiphanies that would been unimaginable before Libya's turn at chairing that committee. Could anyone have envisioned Libya admitting responsibility for the Pan Am disaster at Lockerbie, Scotland, or backing away from lethal WMDs, if she had not been given the responsibility of heading a human rights institution?

I hope that Zimbabwe, as the new head the UN's commission on Sustainable Development, will transform similarly. Prescriptive behavioural management does not have nearly the effectiveness of developmental techniques.

Alan Blanes, facilitator, World Movement for the Culture of Peace Initiative 2000-2010, Edmonton Committee, Edmonton.

By the way, the World Movement for the Culture of Peace appears to have some affiliation with the UN. Now, if we could only get Sudan as the head of UNICEF, the children of Darfur will have much better lives.

(also at The London Fog)

NPR reports:

One former Taliban official and Afghan author on the group says the Taliban's goal at this stage is not to take over Afghanistan — which they neither have the manpower nor popular support for — but to force the ouster of Western troops from Afghanistan.

(via: Gen X At 40)

With so much of the news rightly focusing on Virgina Tech, the mass murdering of muslems in Iraq by other muslems continues. CBC reports:At least 164 killed in series of Baghdad blasts

At least 164 people were killed and dozens were wounded Wednesday in four bomb attacks in Baghdad, one of the deadliest waves of violence since the start of a joint U.S.-Iraqi security campaign in the capital two months ago.

In the deadliest of the attacks, a parked car bomb detonated in a crowd of workers at the Sadriyah market in a mostly Shia area of central Baghdad, killing at least 116 people and injuring 145, said Raad Muhsin, an official at Al-Kindi Hospital where the victims were taken.

As my faithful reader would know, I am opposed to capital punishment. That opposition comes with qualifications. I am opposed to capital punishment in western civilizations where we have individual rights vs. the state. In a tyranny where the tyrant is playing the real game of power politics, things are a tad different. The tyrant uses whatever means -violence, death, torture, famine -to stay in power because when he is out of power he is going to face the same thing. It is a zero sum kind of game. In power, in exile or dead. Those are the choices. Saddam got his and now crying starts for a man who was not going to cry. He knew the game and he played it well and it ended as he knew it could. Would his death have been more acceptable if he was captured and killed by a mob after the fall of Iraq? Perhaps, but the world is rid of a bad guy. If alive, there was always the possiblity of a return to power.

 UPDATE: Of course Victor David Hansen has a view on this which is worth a read:

In Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer, a "committee of sappy women" petition the governor to pardon the murderous Injun Joe. "If he had been Satan himself,” Twain snorts, “there would have been plenty of weaklings ready to scribble their names to a pardon petition, and drip a tear on it from their permanently impaired and leaky waterworks."

I thought of this passage as I read with disgust the international reaction to the hanging of Saddam Hussein. People who shrugged at Hussein’s torture, mutilation, murder, and genocide are now shocked, shocked that his victims sent him off to Hell with a few humiliating barbs. What do you expect? These are the people whose fathers and brothers were slaughtered by Hussein and his minions. It strikes me as the epitome of restraint that they just hanged him rather than paying him back in cruel kind.