Keep up with developments at the Guardian (counter to blog conventions, most recent updates are at the bottom).
Whenceforth the Zimbabwe obsession, when there is just as much happening in Tibet and Iraq, when the Koreas are threatening to obliterate each other and who knows what's up in Iran, not to mention the ongoing horror of Israel and Palestine?
No-brainer: I've been to Zimbabwe, so I can see it in my head, I know from experience what it was like (I'm sure I've written about this before--that people are starving in Zimbabwe is appalling, given richness of land and resources) (hmm, looks like maybe I haven't written about it in depth, but no time right now, so just take my word for it: Zimbabwe in 1989 was a vista of possibility, albeit a complicated vista, and Mugabe has run the entire country into the ground on selfishness, corruption, and misguided pseudo-populist-anti-colonialism).
Is there a takeaway about American interest in foreign countries? Travel is good? It's easier when there's a clear bad guy? Crisis draws more attention than ongoing conflict? Yes, yes, yes, I suppose, but mainly I just want to see that man gone, and hope that what comes next is better.
1 comment:
I was in Zimbabwe in 2002, when things were already falling apart. I find it almost impossible to think about the poverty I saw then, and try to imagine what a million-fold inflation since then has done.
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