This from the BBC is just too much. John Simpson – who should know better – gushes on about Mugabe’s ‘extraordinary turnaround’ under a heading about ‘Mugabe’s remarkable comeback’. A ‘sweeping victory for a man who only three months ago seemed on the ropes.’ What makes a seemingly intelligent journalist […]
Imagine. You fairly win an auction to buy a house. But having attempted to rig the auction the previous owner will not move out, and starts to attack you viciously when you come to claim the property. Most of the others living on the street and further afield are dismayed, […]
As the UN warns of mass starvation in Zimbabwe the time has come to stop talking about the ‘Zimbabwe elections’ as if they were/are elections. What we are seeing are the deranged throes of a violent gang around and including Mugabe aimed at staying in power at any cost to […]
Imagine you are the Foreign Office in London. A bit of a wildcat in your youth. Yet still squeaky keen to show Relevance and Cleverness. Egad! An idea dawns. Let London lead the praise for the sybaritic delights of latter-day Western personal freedom! British Embassies should all fly the LGBT […]
The BBC last night led its top news programme with warnings of a new famine in Ethiopia, "caused by two factors – drought, and rising food prices". The main ‘deeper’ cause is in fact the long the reign of Marxist terror by dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam, which killed a million […]
Zimbabwe as expected falls ever more steeply to total disaster. The gang of military/security leaders previously dependent on Mugabe now look to be running the shop, desperate as they are to cling on to power and privileges at the cost of ruining their own country. A text-book case. Yet the UN still […]
The Guardian’s Madeleine Bunting visits a new bore-hole in Africa, funded not by official development assistance but by voluntary efforts. She asks in some despair: "But the question that keeps coming back is: where is the state investment in Katine? Why isn’t Kampala finding the money to drill a borehole […]
Our Ambassador in Zimbabwe Andrew Pocock has had a confrontation with the Mugabe regime when he and some senior diplomatic colleagues went to have a look at what is now happening in Zimbabwe beyond the capital. Thus the dilemma of diplomats in a country run by gangsters and heading for disaster. The […]
Hurrah. An African leader hits a corpulent target, calling for the FAO to be abolished. Meanwhile rich countries scatter yet more subsidised food aid here and there, to Do Something. When the Soviet Union collapsed there were fears that Russians would starve to death in ther millions. I sat in on Whitehall […]
What is unfolding now in Zimbabwe is what we would have seen in Serbia in 2000 if Milosevic had had his way in the elections which brought him down. An extended attempt to avoid declaring a result through trite, pompous bureaucratic and legal manoeuvres. This is aimed at taking the psychological […]
