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.

check out the United Nations Human Rights Council....

more on  the United Nations

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

UN Commission On Sustainable Bureaucracy

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.

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)

This, of course, marks the second alarmist release by the UN this year, both coming before its own scientific report on global warming is even out.

Just why would the UN release these teaser summaries before its actual scientific findings are available? It could it be that the science is becoming less alarming as scientists learn more, so the UN wants to maximize the public hysteria before its catastrophic forecasts for the future can be checked against the more moderate scientific truth.

We already know that the coming report -- the fourth by the UN in 15 years -- will say that maximum projected temperatures over the next century will not be nearly as high as projected in the last report in 2001; that man has contributed less to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than originally thought; and that sea level rise will be only a few inches, rather than the several feet once thought.

Yet the so-called "summaries for policy makers" are becoming more shrill each time: Species will be wiped out, crime will rise, starvation will kill hundreds of millions, disease will become rampant, islands will disappear beneath the waves, deserts will consume entire continents.

Science goes down, UN hysteria goes up. Curious, isn't it, how that plays into the UN's desire to be at the centre of a global effort to plan human activity?

Read the rest.

(Via Bourque)

cross posted at The London Fog

 Victor David Hanson, as usual offers some perspective:

What is disturbing about the Iranian piracy is that it establishes a warning of what we can come to expect when Iran is nuclear, and how organizations like the UN, the EU, and NATO will react. If a few Iranian terrorists in boats can paralyze an entire nation and the above agencies, think what a half-dozen Iranian nukes will do. This was the hour of Europe to step forward and show the world what it can do with sanctions, embargoes, and boycotts, and how such soft power is as effective as gunboats—and it is passing.

Let them eat human rights

(From Mike @ The London Fog. It's worth watching the video to see what diplomacy isn't)