Sorry I've been AWOL. That old chronic fatigue thing decided to raise its ugly head and I've needed all my meager energy just to make sure the bills get paid and that there's food in the house. Anything else is extra.

Along with the writing I haven't been doing, and discovering that my crit group found my opening chapter very confusing (nothing like a good crit group to prevent you from making a fool of yourself), I have also been keeping a bit of an eye on the world, which hasn't helped much in lifting my spirits.

Zimbabwe continues to suffer in its Mugabe-created hell. When I think of the hope that they must have felt when he first came to power, my heart aches for them.

I continue to try to ignore what's going on in Russia, as the country cheerfully and willingly marches back to a totalitarian, belligerent dictatorship. It makes you wish Fukuyama had been right, although I never believed for a single second that he was. Equilibrium is something that humanity never lives in, just a point we pass through on our pendulum swings.

How long before somebody decides enough is enough and takes over Somalia?

On a lighter note, expose Americans to Canadian football long enough, and they will never go back...

But Haddox, and about a half-dozen of her Baltimore buddies, couldn't let go of their passion for high-scoring, wide-open Canadian football and have continued to get their fix by making Grey Cups trips an annual ritual.

What's on your mind lately?

Zimbabwe opposition offices raided

So reads the headline on the Yahoo news report. It then continues:

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.

Hands up, everyone who is surprised. It may be an ominous indication, but I personally am surprised that Mugabe has shown this much restraint. It's totally out of character. Power will slip out of his hands when they are cold and dead, and not a minute earlier. His use of intimidation and violence is well-documented and goes way back.

It's rather uncomfortable for journalists to document that though. Mugabe was a former media darling. It is difficult to admit mistakes, especially ones that never should have been made. To this day journalists seem incapable of summoning the moral outrage they applied (rightly, in that case) to apartheid and turning it against Mugabe. This despite the fact that he has turned his formerly prosperous country into a hellhole that most of his people would cheerfully leave for South Africa - present or past - or for old-time Rhodesia.

It is the African tragedy writ large all over again: a "liberator" who is really only interested in his own power. And a politically correct world that should be howling in outrage but doesn't. And journalists who express polite amazement at the inevitable.

I think I shall go be ill.


Technorati tags: Mugabe, Journalism, Zimbabwe