A reader writes: "Iowahawk masterpiece (only this time it's not funny)."

God bless Bakouma Kpatekatola.

Norman Borlaug and Andrew Natsios in the Wall Street Journal.

The New York Times' Michael Wines reports:

Robert G. Mugabe has ruled over this battered nation, his every wish endorsed by Parliament and enforced by the police and soldiers, for more than 27 years. It appears, however, that not even an unchallenged autocrat can repeal the laws of supply and demand.

One month after Mr. Mugabe decreed just that, commanding merchants nationwide to counter 10,000-percent-a-year hyperinflation by slashing prices in half and more, Zimbabwe’s economy is at a halt.

Bread, sugar and cornmeal, staples of every Zimbabwean’s diet, have vanished, seized by mobs who denuded stores like locusts in wheat fields. Meat is virtually nonexistent, even for members of the middle class who have money to buy it on the black market. Gasoline is nearly unobtainable. Hospital patients are dying for lack of basic medical supplies. Power blackouts and water cutoffs are endemic.

Manufacturing has slowed to a crawl because few businesses can produce goods for less than their government-imposed sale prices. Raw materials are drying up because suppliers are being forced to sell to factories at a loss. Businesses are laying off workers or reducing their hours.

The chaos, however, seems to have done little to undermine Mr. Mugabe’s authority. To the contrary, the government is moving steadily toward a takeover of major sectors of the economy that have not already been nationalized.

Thanks to Mugabe. (The picture accompanying the piece speaks volumes.)

From The Economist:

Zimbabwe is an increasingly wretched place and, sadly, will grow more miserable for some time yet. This week an outspoken Roman Catholic Archbishop, Pius Ncube, who has become the strongest voice of opposition in the country, described the economic situation as “life-threatening”. That was an understatement. Years of economic collapse, provoked by dreadful misrule, have already taken a huge toll on Zimbabwean lives: the population has been battered by hunger, poverty and AIDS; some 3m people are estimated to have fled abroad; life expectancy has dropped to medieval levels.

Mr Ncube has also called on outsiders—notably on Britain, the former colonial power—to make some sort of (peaceful) intervention to remove the government of the ageing president, Robert Mugabe. But outsiders either lack the inclination to push Mr Mugabe to go, or they lack any effective means of getting him out. Yet until Mr Mugabe’s undemocratic regime is replaced, there is no hope of any recovery.

Read the whole piece.

From AP:

A senior U.S. diplomat accused Iran on Tuesday of transferring weapons to Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan — the most direct comments yet on the issue by a ranking American official.

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, speaking to reporters in Paris, said Iran was funding insurrections across the Middle East — and "Iran is now even transferring arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan."

"It's a country that's trying to flex its muscles, but in a way that's injurious to the interests of just about everybody else in the world," he said. "I think it's a major miscalculation."

In Afghanistan last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Iranian weapons were falling into the hands of Taliban fighters, but stopped short of blaming the government itself.

Iran's possible role in aiding insurgents in Iraq has long been hotly debated, and last month some Western and Persian Gulf governments charged that the Islamic government in Tehran is also secretly bolstering Taliban fighters.

In a move that speaks well of Edinburgh University, the Times of London reports that the school has decided to strip Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe of an honorary degree for education in Africa.

Times of London reporters Shirley English and David Lister write:

Tim Goodwin, outgoing president of Edinburgh University Student Association, said: “Robert Mugabe is a well-known, internationally recognised dictator and oppressor of his own people, and I think this has been an embarrassment to the university. I am pleased action is at last being taken.”
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Edinburgh University agreed to set up an investigative panel after the student association raised the issue in November 2005. The panel established that the university had legal powers to recall an honorary degree.

A spokesman said yesterday that the panel had “examined evidence relating to the situation in Zimbabwe in the early 1980s, evidence which was not available to the university at the time the degree was conferred”. The Senate had considered the recommendations and agreed unanimously to accept them.

In the United States, the University of Massachusetts and Michigan State University are also considering stripping Mr Mugabe of honorary degrees.

It's only a symbolic move, but it's still welcome.

The University of Massachusetts and Michigan State need to get on the stick...

From AP:

The Sudanese government condemned a new set of U.S. economic sanctions aimed at pressuring it to halt the bloodshed in Darfur, describing them Tuesday as "unfair and untimely" and calling on the rest of the world to ignore them.

President Bush announced the United States was enforcing sanctions that bar 31 Sudanese companies owned or controlled by Sudan's government from the U.S. banking system. The sanctions also prevent three Sudanese individuals from doing business with U.S. companies or banks.

"We believe this decision is unfair and untimely," Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ali Sadiq, told The Associated Press.

From an Investor's Business Daily editorial:

African leaders often point fingers at the West for "not doing enough." But last week's meeting of the Southern African Development Community shows why sensible wealthy nations are reluctant to give aid.

For at that meeting, some of Africa's so-called leaders disgraced themselves by endorsing the brutal, murderous regime of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.

Mugabe's 27 years of misrule have taken a country that was once prosperous — the breadbasket of Africa, it was called — and turned it into a poverty-stricken hellhole rife with famine, genocide and terror, and lacking rule of law.

The Heritage Foundation's recent Index of Economic Freedom ranked Zimbabwe 154th out of 157 countries in terms of economic freedom — and dead last in Africa.

"Corruption is endemic, inflation is in triple digits, most economic activity is informal, and controversial land reform has seriously undermined agricultural production," the report said. ... Sadly, that description doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what Mugabe has wrought. His thugs have taken to beating and jailing thousands of his opponents.
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Seizures of farms from highly productive farmers have led to widespread hunger. Meanwhile, economic mismanagement has sent inflation soaring to 1,700% a year. Real output per person has plunged two-thirds since 2003.
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Faced with such economic chaos, more than 3 million people — many of them Zimbabwe's most productive citizens — have become refugees in neighboring countries.

Given that performance, you'd think Mugabe would come in for a bit of criticism by other leaders in the region.

But you'd be wrong. At the SADC meeting, 14 leaders issued a communique in which they, as the Times of London put it, "reaffirmed their solidarity" with Mugabe. That is, they supported a murderous dictator and even called on the West to drop sanctions against his regime.

Read the whole piece.

That Robert Mugabe, what a sweetheart...

From the Times of London:

Police in Zimbabwe imposed a three-month ban on political rallies and demonstrations across large parts of Harare today as Robert Mugabe, the world's oldest head of state, celebrated his 83rd birthday.

The blanket ban, announced in state-controlled newspapers, came as supporters of the hardline President prepared a lavish cake-and-fizzy-drinks birthday party in the central city of Gweru, to be held on Saturday ... The ban follows weekend clashes in the capital between police and activists from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) which culminated in riots squads firing tear gas and water cannon to stop an opposition rally.

Authorities claimed that the rally caused “pandemonium, looting and the destruction of property”. The MDC, in reply, described the ban as a “state of emergency” that showed the growing sense panic within the Mugabe regime.

Sudanese officials have arrested Chicago Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek, his driver, and interpreter on charges of spying and writing "false news," the Tribune is reporting.

This follows the sentencing of "Slovenian writer and activist Tomo Kriznar to two years in prison on charges of spying and publishing false information" August 14, and "the deportation of an American freelance photographer who had been detained" earlier this month -- both by the same judge presiding in Salopek's case, according to the Trib.

Tribune national correspondent Tim Jones reports:

Paul Salopek, a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, was charged with espionage and two other criminal counts in a Sudanese court Saturday, three weeks after he was detained by pro-government forces in the war-torn province of Darfur.

Salopek, 44, who was on a freelance assignment for National Geographic magazine, was arrested with two Chadian nationals, his interpreter and driver. If convicted, they could be imprisoned for years.

Chicago Tribune Editor and Senior Vice President Ann Marie Lipinski called Salopek "one of the most accomplished and admired journalists of our time. He is not a spy.

"Our fervent hope is that the authorities in Sudan will recognize his innocence and quickly allow Paul to return home to his wife, Linda, and to his colleagues," Lipinski said. She added: "We are deeply worried about Paul and his well-being, and appeal to the government of Sudan to return him safely home."

Salopek was on a scheduled leave of absence from the Tribune when he and the two Chadians were detained Aug. 6 and jailed. All three were officially charged Saturday with espionage, passing information illegally and writing "false news."

The Times of London's Carl Mortishead reports:

Ask Andrew Mwenda how rich nations can help Africa and you get a quick and disturbing answer.

“The best thing the West can do is nothing,” he says.

The Ugandan journalist and broadcaster is in London telling anyone who is prepared to listen that aid has been a disaster for Africa, fuelling corruption and hindering development.
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Mr Mwenda is widely known in Africa; less so in the West — and for a reason. He accuses charities and aid agencies of self-interest, of seeking to feather their nests and expand their market share, and he talks about the big issue that is never mentioned: race.

“White society is being blackmailed. The white world looks at Africa from a position of guilt,” he told a seminar at IPN, the London think tank. The beneficiaries of aid are governments, politicians, the staff of aid agencies and charities, he says.
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Aid is the problem, not the solution, he says. Debt relief is a moral hazard. What is the incentive for country “A” to continue paying interest on its borrowings if country “B” steals the money, defaults and then gets debt relief.

“Countries that are deserving don’t get aid,” says Mr Mwenda. Aid creates the wrong incentives, he argues. It makes objects of the poor, passive recipients of charity rather than active participants in their own economic betterment. Africans don’t need handouts, they need better institutions, land reform and access to cheap mortgages.

“Countries and individuals get richer out of self-interest. Capital is a by-product of development, not an input,” says Mr Mwenda.
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“Aid has destroyed the concept of civil society in Africa. What exists are the NGOs. They are bureaucracies committed to the interests of donors. Cut off the foreign aid and 90 per cent will disappear,” says Mr Mwenda.