Before The Deluge

Tomorrow is likely to be a very sad day. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's speech at Friday prayers basically gave a warning today, essentially vowing violence if people went out into the streets tomorrow. The regime may not do it in public; they may use the Basiji Guard militia to round up the protestors at night after the protests during the day. That's certainly plausible in an environment where the world has its eyes trained on Iran - the protests diminish because everyone slowly gets rounded up, and the remaining protestors become demoralized, and the regime can plausibly say they petered out on their own accord.

But this doesn't exactly sound like someone who thinks he needs to do his business under cover of darkness:

Street challenges after the elections are not the right thing to do. This is, in fact, challenging the principle of elections and democracy. I want everyone to end this sort of action. If they do not end it then the consequences of this lie with them (street protestors).

The consequences of this lie with them. If they break the law they must suffer the consequences, in other words. And at this point, Khamenei has put his own credibility on the line. In a post at the Foreign Policy blog, Karim Sadjadpour says:

The weight of the world now rests on the shoulders of Mir Hossein Mousavi. I expect that Khamenei's people have privately sent signals to him that they're ready for a bloodbath, they're prepared to use overwhelming force to crush this, and is he willing to lead the people in the streets to slaughter?

Mousavi is not Khomeini, and Khamenei is not the Shah. Meaning, Khomeini would not hesitate to lead his followers to "martyrdom", and the Shah did not have the stomach for mass bloodshed. This time the religious zealots are the ones holding power.

There are scattered reports that the young people coming out in the streets day after day now how crucial tomorrow will be. This is completely heartbreaking:

I will participate in the demonstrations tomorrow. Maybe they will turn violent. Maybe I will be one of the people who is going to get killed. I’m listening to all my favorite music. I even want to dance to a few songs. I always wanted to have very narrow eyebrows. Yes, maybe I will go to the salon before I go tomorrow! [...] My mind is very chaotic. I wrote these random sentences for the next generation so they know we were not just emotional and under peer pressure. So they know that we did everything we could to create a better future for them. So they know that our ancestors surrendered to Arabs and Mongols but did not surrender to despotism. This note is dedicated to tomorrow’s children…

More like this at Nico Pitney's liveblog. It's all very dramatic.

In an interview released today, President Obama went slightly further than he has in the past, saying that "the world is watching" and "we stand behind those who are seeking justice in a peaceful way." Reiterating that we are watching is perhaps the best hope to end what seems to be coming tomorrow. Because I'm afraid of what we'll see.

Murder In Harare

It was never fated to work. Robert Mugabe has been essentially a dictator for 30 years, and despite Morgan Tsvangirai's participation in the government as Prime Minister, it was clear that the power-sharing agreement would soon break down. I just didn't know that it would happen so fast or so brazenly:

Zimbabwe Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai's wife, Susan, was killed in a car wreck, senior officials with his party told CNN Friday.

Tsvangirai was injured along with an aide and the car's driver in the head-on collision with a large truck, according to Tsvangirai's spokesman, James Maridadi.

The extent of their injuries is not clear.

"Yes I can confirm that he was involved in a car accident along Harare-Masvingo road," Maridadi said.

"He has been brought to Harare and doctors are looking at him at a hospital."

Through an aide, Tsvangirai is now claiming that the crash was deliberate.

Zimbabwe's prime minister believes the driver of the truck that struck his car, killing his wife, deliberately drove toward them, his party told CNN.

Members of his political party, the Movement for Democratic Change, and former U.S. diplomat also say the crash raises suspicions of foul play.

The prime minister left a hospital Saturday, a day after his wife, Susan, was killed in the collision, officials said [...]

Tendai Biti, the MDC secretary-general, speaking during a tearful press conference, said Tsvangirai should have had better security.

"If there had been a police escort maybe what happened yesterday could have not have happened," Biti said.

"(A) police escort would have warned oncoming vehicles of a VIP arriving. I think authorities must understand the omission.

"We hope that this omission will be rectified, that the prime minister must be given the protection that ought to be accorded to a prime minister."

You take your life in your hands just driving in Africa, so it's not implausible that this was just a tragic accident. But Mugabe has disposed of rivals in this fashion before. And he certainly wouldn't have any moral reason not to engage in gangland behavior.

Watch this unravel the entire power sharing agreement. And it brings up a significant question - with the African Union impotent, the UN unable to function and the US tied down in two wars, exactly who would enforce the peace in Zimbabwe if Mugabe was exposed as a murderer and chaos reigned?

World Report

Been a while since I got into this.

• Iraq: The speaker of the Parliament has been officially ousted in a move that doesn't seem to bother anyone, not even the speaker, who was kind of a loose cannon. But if anything, it's a symbol of the political power plays that have gripped the country for the past six months, leading into provincial elections. The Prime Minister is surely consolidating power, using a narrow amount of goodwill engendered by security gains to muscle his competition for power. Maliki wants a strong central government because he's at the head of it, while the Sunni and Kurdish factions want their own authority and independence.

“Maliki is monopolizing all the political, security and economic decisions,” said Omar Abdul Sattar, a Sunni member of Parliament. He listed political parties that he said were turning against the prime minister, including a powerful Shiite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, which is fighting Mr. Maliki’s drive to centralize power in Baghdad and pushing to give more to the provinces — where the party has important power bases, particularly in the south. “It’s simply the story of the transformation from a democratic prime minister into a dictator,” he said.

Given Iraq's history with dictatorships, and the fractious nature of ethnic and sectarian divides in the country, this is a natural state of affairs, which is why the hopeful talk of democratic transformation in the heart of the Middle East was always such rubbish. We invaded Iraq to remove a dictator so they could eventually install another one, this time with a more overtly religious cast. Not that Iraq was a threat to the United States beforehand, but it's hard to see how this made our country any safer, especially when factoring in the human and financial costs.

• Israel: I'm very worried that full-scale fighting is about to break out between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. Hamas ended its cease-fire last week, and has been lobbing dozens of rockets into Israeli territory. Since Hamas' electoral victory, Israel has sealed off the Gaza strip, turning it into essentially a large prison. Egypt, which has been offering aid and assistance to the Palestinians in Gaza, wants to mediate a truce, but I don't think it's likely. There is a faction in Israel that sees crushing Hamas as part of the road to peace - and that's the LESS hawkish faction! This is going to explode in the next several days. Very worrying.

• Japan: The Pacific Rim nation is mired in another deep recession, as industrial output cratered and deflation appeared imminent. Japan was growing largely on the back of American consumption of their goods the past few years, and so this was inevitable. As America's rise back to prominence is tied to stimulating a home-grown industrial base, it's hard to see how Asian nations like this improve unless we give up and try to return to an unsustainable consumption model again.

• Somalia: The President of the transitional (read: powerless) government is resigning. By next year, I gather that you will see the Islamic Courts Union back in power here. Ethiopia will pull all their forces out in the next few weeks, and there is little to stop the ICU. And so a US-sponsored war will have produced nothing but more bloodshed and the rise of a powerful cadre of pirates, who reduced global economic trade through thievery. It was a shortsighted solution lacking a regional context, and it failed totally.

• Guinea: I'm not going to lie and say that I am perfectly well-versed about Guinea (not to be confused with Guinea-Bissau or Papua New Guinea), but they've had a coup by a military junta, which is the 10,834th of the military-led coups in Africa since, oh, last week. The latest in Guinea followed the death of a longtime dictator, Lansana Conte. The cycle of coups and state-sponsored repression is so commonplace on the continent, that it's hard to find a glimmer of hope. The African Union is simply not a strong enough institution to deter the practice.

• Europe: European leaders are talking about accepting some Guantanamo detainees as a gesture of goodwill toward the new President. Obama is going to have a global honeymoon period where he can really get a lot accomplished, and closing Gitmo should be at the top of that list as pertaining to foreign policy. One possible red flag is the persistence of Robert Gates at the helm of the Defense Department. He is being sued by Guantanamo detainee lawyers for signing a false affidavit that allowed him to sidestep disclosure of torture. That will not help any charm offensive. Pro Publica has a good roundup of the year in Gitmo here.

Took A While

Now the US decides it can't accept the power-sharing agreement in Zimbabwe, or any government with Robert Mugabe at the helm. Mind you, the power-sharing agreement was put together several months ago.

Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, made the announcement in South Africa after spending the last several days explaining the U.S. shift to regional leaders. The new U.S. stance will put pressure on Zimbabwe's neighbors -- South Africa in particular -- to abandon Mugabe. But South Africa said its position was unchanged.

The U.S., Frazer said, has become convinced Mugabe is incapable of sharing power.

She cited political moves he has made since September without consulting the opposition, reports his regime has continued to harass and arrest opposition and human rights activists, and the continued deterioration of Zimbabwe's humanitarian and economic situation. Particularly worrying, she said, was the rapid spread of cholera, an easily treatable and preventable disease that has killed at least 1,000 Zimbabweans since August [...]

Frazer cited accusations from the Mugabe regime that the West waged biological warfare to deliberately start the cholera epidemic as an indication Mugabe is ''a man who's lost it, who's losing his mind, who's out of touch with reality.''

If Mugabe's neighbors were to unite and ''go to Mugabe and tell him to go, I do think he would go,'' she said.

It's just so late for this kind of change of heart. When Mugabe was threatening to kill his opposition back in June, that would have been a decent time to speak out. When he was plotting to rig the election, that could have been a moment to say no. Maybe before Zimbabwe had to print the 10 quintillion-dollar note, that could have been a good time. For months if not years it has been obvious that Mugabe was running his country aground, murdering and imprisoning dissenters and leaving many of his countrymen to die. At any point, the US could have shifted policy and pushed Mugabe's neighbors to expel him. Now? Well, he's not likely to listen, if he ever was.

President Robert Mugabe has said that "Zimbabwe is mine" and rejected calls from some African leaders to step down.

"I will never, never, never surrender," he told delegates of his ruling Zanu-PF party at its annual conference.

Mr Mugabe also said he had sent a letter to the country's main opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, inviting him to be sworn in as prime minister.

Earlier, Mr Tsvangirai said he would pull out of power-sharing talks unless abductions of his supporters stopped.

I am encouraged that the US will finally try to move African nations to cut Mugabe a deal to get him out of power. But it took far too long.

These Aren't The Dead Zimbabweans You're Looking For

I guess when delusion has kept you in power for 30 years, you keep going with it:

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe declared Thursday that a cholera epidemic in the southern African nation had been "arrested," even as the United Nations said deaths from the illness had risen to 783.

In a speech at a funeral for a ruling party official, Mugabe credited the World Health Organization for helping contain the outbreak in Zimbabwe, which last week declared a national health emergency.

"Now there is no cholera, there is no cause for war," Mugabe said, according to news service reports. "We need doctors, not soldiers."

Mugabe's assessment of the outbreak was disputed by health-care organizations, which have flooded the economically devastated country in recent weeks with supplies and personnel. On Wednesday, the United Nations called for an additional $6 million to tackle cholera, which it said threatens "the well-being of thousands of people."

Nelson Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition party Movement for Democratic Change, told the Bloomberg news service that Mugabe's claim was "clearly madness."

This is beyond the point where anyone can shake their heads. People are dying because of Mugabe's fictions. The international community must come to their rescue.

...the latest claim from a Zimbabwean minister is that the UK used bioterrorism to cause the cholera outbreak. It wasn't the grinding poverty and dysfunctional government leading to disease. Nope.

Zimbabwe Update

So the President expanded sanctions against the Zimbabwean government, at the same time that both Robert Mugabe and opposition leaders are meeting for talks on forming a unity government. So what's going on here? Richard Dowder thinks it's a trap:

It is clear what Robert Mugabe wants to see from the talks with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) that began in South Africa on Thursday. On December 27 1987 he sat down with Joshua Nkomo, the leader of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (Zapu) and signed a unity accord. It followed seven years of sustained violence against Nkomo's party in which some 18,000 people died. The creation of a government of national unity made Nkomo vice-president. Three Zapu leaders were given cabinet posts. They might as well have been hamsters in a cage on Mugabe's desk.

This is what Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the MDC, must remember as he sits down at the talks. Like Nkomo, his party has been battered, with many of his MPs dead, in hiding or facing charges, and more than 1,500 officials in prison. The mediator, Thabo Mbeki, and other African presidents would be happy with a deal similar to the 1987 accord. But will the MDC be able to arm-wrestle a deal that leads to Mugabe stepping down or to free and fair elections - or even a joint Mugabe/Tsvangirai control of the state and its security apparatus? The question, as Humpty Dumpty said, is: who is to be master?

Dowder argues that the talks are aimed at buying time while Mugabe can consolidate his grip on power and prepare for war. Certainly what we saw leading up to the election - tales of rape, murder, and intimidation - lead in that direction. The race might be between time and economic survival. Zimbabwe cannot currently produce enough bank note paper to keep the government solvent and paying for its thugs and supporters in the military. Really chaos is inevitable - it's a matter of how long the ruling elite can keep it at bay. So freezing the financial assets that they are taking out of the country with utmost speed is a good step.

No-Choice Election Day!

They're going ahead with the vote in Zimbabwe despite unanimous international outcry, and turnout has so far been sluggish. NPR reported that Robert Mugabe's ruling party forces will soon be forcing people to vote under penalty of death, and that all people without the purple ink-stained finger will be assumed to be opposition supporters, and thereafter beaten or killed. Mugabe tried to make with the accommodationist talk:

On the campaign trail Thursday, Mugabe said he was "open to discussion" with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, but only after the vote. Mugabe had shown little interest in talks and his government had scoffed at Tsvangirai's call Wednesday to work together to form a transitional authority.

But the fact that he's threatened to kill opposition supporters makes me, shall we say, skeptical.

No country on Earth would be more perfect for Arthur Silber's stateless society project than Zimbabwe. They can't kill everyone for not voting.

Mugabe's Long Legacy

The traditional media and the political class are finally starting to catch up about the clown show that is Zimbabwe, where the ruling ZANU-PF party raided the oppostion headquarters and the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, has to hide out at the Dutch embassy. It was obvious for about a month or two that Robert Mugabe wouldn't relinquish power and was willing to wage war if he lost the election. The Secretary of State is finally speaking out, and the Administration managed to get a weak condemnation of Mugabe through the UN Security Council. The trade unionists in South Africa is calling for economic isolation of the Zimbabwean government, but I can't see how they would be able to isolate them any more. There are rumblings from Britain about military action, as well (not sure I agree).

Welcome to the party, everyone. Mugabe has been doing this for YEARS. The African Union has been covering for him (including Nelson Mandela) while inflation skyrocketed and everyone except for his political allies were oppressed. Thanks for allowing this to fester. The people of Zimbabwe thank you.

Why Have The Election Indeed

The MDC pulled out of the runoff today. Clearly Mugabe was not going to relinquish power by peaceful means, so they had no choice. When your supporters are being raped and murdered, a peaceful transition isn't really an option. I'm sad for the Zimbabwean people.

And I Don't Think God's On The Ballot

The view of democracy from Robert Mugabe:

President Robert Mugabe said Friday that "only God" could remove him from office, as Zimbabwe's opposition considered pulling out of next week's run-off election amid escalating violence.

"The MDC will never be allowed to rule this country -- never ever," Mugabe told local business people in Zimbabwe's second city Bulawayo, referring to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

"Only God who appointed me will remove me -- not the MDC, not the British." [...]

Later Friday, at a rally in Bulawayo, Mugabe said: "We will never allow an event like an election reverse our independence, our sovereignty, our sweat and all that we fought for ... all that our comrades died fighting for."

Only cowards let an "election" remove them from power.

There's no point to even having the election now, as the MDC has said themselves.

Don't Even Bother With The Election At This Point

Suppose you had an election where one candidate's rallies were banned. He was continually arrested throughout the campaign, and the secretary-general of his party was held for treason. The national TV station refused to air his ads. On the other hand, the incumbent candidate rallies all over the country. People in the street would be beaten for not knowing his campaign slogan. Without a membership card to his party it would be next to impossible to get food aid.

Considering these factors, it's a testament to how uniformly awful a place Zimbabwe is and how hated a ruler Robert Mugabe is that the opponent WON the first round of voting.

I guess Thabo Mbeki met with Mugabe yesterday, but the opposition claims he's on Mugabe's side, so his role will be limited.

Thinking about Zimbabwe makes my head hurt. I long for the relative problems of funding endless war and allowing warrantless wiretapping.

Sounds Like It'll Be A Peaceful Transition Of Power

Why are we even bothering with the election in Zimbabwe, can't we go directly to the riot?

A defiant President Robert Mugabe yesterday vowed he would 'go to war' if he lost the presidential run-off due to take place in less than two weeks.

Describing the opposition as 'traitors', he claimed Zimbabwe would never 'be lost' again. Speaking at the burial of a veteran of the independence war, Mugabe said he would never accept the Movement for Democratic Change taking over. 'It shall never happen ... as long as I am alive and those who fought for the country are alive,' he said. 'We are prepared to fight for our country and to go to war for it.'

There isn't going to be anything approaching an election on June 27. It's going to be a sham. The electoral commission won't allow monitors to be accredited. There aren't enough monitors to man all the voting stations even if the ruling party would let them. Voters are being murdered already, and state violence is growing. What's going to happen in two weeks will be unspeakable, and the international community is doing seemingly nothing about it.

All The Lovely Lobbyists

John McCain's firing of two lobbyists who worked for the military junta in Burma opened a window into his many other associates who have dealings with some of the worst dictators and bad actors on the planet. Charlie Black is a one-man wrecking crew all by himself, consorting with Blackwater, Chiquita (who has admitted to paying terrorists in Colombia), Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, Ferdinand Marcos, Mohammed Said Barre of Somalia, and maybe the worst, Jonas Savimbi of Angola.

Those of you who were too young to be paying attention during the 1980s might not remember Jonas Savimbi and his organization, UNITA. Briefly: there had been armed resistance to Portuguese rule for years, but when Angola became independent of Portugal in 1975, a full-bore civil war broke out. It lasted, with a few short breaks, from 1975 until Savimbi's death in 2002. It started as a scramble for power after independence, heightened by the Cold War. (Apparently, declassified documents show that we intervened before the USSR and Cuba. I didn't know that.) Savimbi, who started out as a Maoist and a Portuguese agent, became one of our guys (he was also heavily supported by the apartheid government of South Africa); his main rival, the actual government of Angola, was supported by the USSR and Cuba.

During the 1980s, this turned into a full-bore Cold War proxy fight. This did not have to happen. We could have let Angola be. Its government was dreadful, but Savimbi was no rose either; even if you think that we should intervene in other countries, when a country seems to have a choice between two awful options, there's no real point in choosing sides, and certainly no point in plunging a country into civil war to get your side to win. This would not have prevented civil war -- Savimbi was supported by South Africa, which had a policy of trying to bog down the states near its borders in civil wars -- but it would have meant not actively contributing to the destruction of a country for no good reason. Alternatively, we could have chosen to support Savimbi, who was even more dreadful, in a civil war.

We chose to support Savimbi, with predictable results:

"The tap that Kissinger had turned on, and Carter had turned off, was opened again in 1981, when Ronald Reagan approved a covert aid package for Unita. South African Special Forces were good at what they did. Unita’s performance was already much improved by comparison with its half-hearted exertions against the Portuguese. Even so, Washington’s financial and diplomatic backing was an immense boost. The country, which was now a Cold War cockpit, remained undefeatable, but it could be comprehensively ruined, and this is what happened. The figures for war-related deaths, and child deaths in particular, leapt dramatically in the 1980s. Towns and villages were deserted or shelled to extinction. The countryside was a living death. There were landmines and limbless people everywhere (there still are). Young men were press-ganged into the burgeoning rabble of the Angolan Army, where the discipline of the elite units could not hope to reach. Unita kidnapped and abducted its fighters or picked up the homeless, traumatised survivors of Government offensives. Some of them were so-called ‘child soldiers’ – ‘premature adults’ is a better description. Provincial capitals became slum havens for hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Savimbi’s struggle, subsumed though it was in a large-scale offensive driven by South Africa and paid for in the United States, had come home to Angola."

Charlie Black was UNITA's lobbyist - and he's continued to lobby for his clients from aboard the Straight Talk Express. This is just a taste - you should read the whole thing at hilzoy's.

Campaign Money Watch has jumped on these unsavory associations and is demanding McCain to fire the lobbyists, which of course would be his entire campaign staff, so it's not going to happen. So they're focusing on Black, Tom Loeffler and Peter Madigan, who have worked for some of the most repressive regimes. Progressive Media USA has more.

Eventually, I'm sure that the traditional media will get around to covering this. Right. Maybe sometime around the first press conference after the inaugural.

Somehow This Will Be Considered Equivalent

Robert Malley works for a think tank called the International Crisis Group where he writes reports analyzing the situation in the Middle East. Unlike Bush Administration analysts he actually talks to all groups in the region, and so the fact that he's talked to members of Hamas in the task of writing his reports means that he's a terrorist and the candidate he informally advises, Barack Obama, is too a terrorist. So Obama fired the guy.

Now, Doug Goodyear was a paid lobbyist for the Burmese government, earning over $300,000 in 2002 and 2003, and he was the guy tapped by John McCain to run the 2008 Republican National Convention. This revelation, of course, comes at a time when the military junta has murdered monks, cracked down on dissidents, and failed their people in delivering necessities to cyclone-ravaged areas where tens of thousands have died. This led to his firing.

Remember, these two things are EXACTLY THE SAME. One guy tries to gather information to create informed policy papers, the other guy gets paid to lie for a dictatorship and is one of the hundreds of lobbyists crawling around the McCain campaign. Exactly the same.

Tragic Disaster Assistance

The military leadership in Burma is choking their own citizens, and while I understand the need to keep politics at the cyclone's edge and not act in a divisive manner by insulting the government whose help you need to administer aid, their behavior has been atrocious. First they started confiscating aid shipments, causing the UN to stop sending them (they've recently changed their minds). Then they allowed a US cargo plane in the country, but basically wanted everything dropped off at the docks. They've continually refused travel visas to aid workers. And now it appears that the boxes of aid they are sending out have the generals' names plastered on them.

Despite international appeals to postpone a referendum on a controversial proposed constitution, voting began Saturday in all but the hardest hit parts of the country. With voters going to the polls, state-run television continuously ran images of top generals including junta leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, handing out boxes of aid at elaborate ceremonies.

"We have already seen regional commanders putting their names on the side of aid shipments from Asia, saying this was a gift from them and then distributing it in their region," said Mark Farmaner, director of Burma Campaign UK, which campaigns for human rights and democracy in the country.

"It is not going to areas where it is most in need," he said in London.

There's going to be a second catastrophe as those in most urgent need of supplies and medical care don't get them in time. The military government is failing its people and doesn't seem to have much concern over it.

The World Stands Down China And Zimbabwe

The latest word is the the Chinese ship full of arms for Robert Mugabe and his thugs may be headed back home.

A Chinese ship carrying weapons and ammunition for Zimbabwe's military may be headed back home, reports said, after repeated attempts to deliver its cargo were frustrated by a coalition of legal activists, union workers and human rights groups.

The region's resistance to the shipment, which drew praise from the United States on Tuesday, marks a dramatic turn from southern Africa's traditional embrace of Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and its reverence for national sovereignty.

It also signals the strength of South Africa's mounting backlash against President Thabo Mbeki's traditionally deferential dealings with Mugabe. The resistance from union workers, almost all of whom are members of his African National Congress, was decisive in preventing the ship from unloading its cargo of bullets and mortars on schedule.

Over countries in the region stopped the ship as well. Since practically the whole African Union had a deferential attitude toward Mugabe in the recent past, this is a significant step. But nobody is arguing for intervention in any way other than a mediating role. And with the "recount" in the Presidential election going on hopelessly compromised, with ballot boxes opened and the like, the idea that this or any future election will be fair is a pipe dream.

This is also another case of China propping up a dictatorship when they're not oppressing entire peoples themselves. The US can begin to regain their moral authority by taking this stand, and their encouragement for African governments to deny the ship was a small step in that direction.

Uh-Oh

I think Robert Mugabe is gearing up to take the country by force.

President Robert Mugabe's government raided the offices of the main opposition movement and rounded up foreign journalists Thursday in an ominous indication that he may use intimidation and violence to keep his grip on power.

Police raided a hotel used by the opposition Movement for Democratic Change and ransacked some of the rooms. Riot police also surrounded another hotel housing foreign journalists, and took away several of them, according to a man who answered the phone there.

"Mugabe has started a crackdown," Movement for Democratic Change general secretary Tendai Biti told The Associated Press. "It is quite clear he has unleashed a war."

Zimbabwe really is a horrible place and it was clear that Mugabe wouldn't go quietly and give up his position as head of state without a fight. There's going to be a runoff in a few weeks and Mugabe will use all of the power of the state to win it. There probably shouldn't even be a runoff, as the MDC Party probably got the votes they needed to win outright. In case you're tuning in late, there's a primer on Mugabe at the end of this article:

Mugabe has ruled since his guerrilla army helped force an end to white minority rule in then-Rhodesia and bring about an independent Zimbabwe in 1980.

He ordered the often-violent seizures of white-owned commercial farms, ostensibly to return them to the landless black majority. Instead, Mugabe replaced a white elite with a black one, giving the farms to relatives, friends and cronies who allowed cultivated fields to be taken over by weeds.

Today, a third of the population depends on imported food handouts. Another third has fled the country and 80 percent is jobless. Inflation is the highest in the world at more than 100,000 percent and people suffer crippling shortages of food, water, electricity, fuel and medicine. Life expectancy has fallen from 60 to 35 years.

I was a little hopeful for a time, but only increased international attention will resolve this amicably. I fear the worst.

Tyrants

George Bush doesn't want anyone sitting around and taking pictures with tyrants:

Sitting down at the table, having your picture taken with a tyrant such as Raul Castro, for example, lends the status of the office and the status of our country to him. He gains a lot from it by saying, look at me, I’m now recognized by the President of the United States.

Except, of course, him. Bush has personally met with the leaders of human rights-abusing countries like Russia, China, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, the latter of whom likes to boil his political opponents alive. And he took pictures; they're at the link.

And not only has he taken pictures, he's openly supported such tyrants, even when it angers the population of that country.

The Bush administration’s continued backing of President Pervez Musharraf, despite the overwhelming rejection of his party by voters this month, is fueling a new level of frustration in Pakistan with the United States.

That support has rankled the public, politicians and journalists here, inciting deep anger at what is perceived as American meddling and the refusal of Washington to embrace the new, democratically elected government. John D. Negroponte, the deputy secretary of state, said Thursday during a Senate panel hearing that the United States would maintain its close ties to Mr. Musharraf.

Pakistanis say the Bush administration is grossly misjudging the political mood in Pakistan and squandering an opportunity to win support from the Pakistani public for its fight against terrorism. The opposition parties that won the Feb. 18 parliamentary elections say they are moderate and pro-American. By working with them, analysts say, Washington could gain a vital, new ally.

Bush obviously feels very at home with tyrants, especially those who don't listen to their citizens, crush dissent and pursue their own agendas. Curious, no?

I guess Bush is also opposed to his looking in the mirror.

...incidentally, nothing can help Barack Obama more than having this President make political attacks against him. If I were Obama I'd run an ad just showing Bush making the attacks over and over. You could be looking at a landslide if Mr. 19% keeps this up.

Now THAT'S Unpopular

They had an election in Uzbekistan yesterday, and President Islam Karimov was running, even though he was term limited. All of the other candidates officially supported Karimov. He still only got 88%, and probable far less since it was rigged.

When you can't pull 100% even though all the candidates in the race endorse you, you've slipped below the Kim Jong Il line.