Taking All Comers

Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe (pictured above indicating the size of his turds as a public reassurance to his supporters of his health) has upped the ante in his latest invective-suffused public address, turning his ire and paranoia from his traditional enemies, the Western powers and the UK in particular, to other African countries. Al-Jazeera English reported on two self-referential gems of his:

"How could African leaders ever topple Robert Mugabe - organise an army to come? It is not easy."

"I do not know of any African country that is brave enough to do that."

Mr. Mugabe is still trying to broker a power-"sharing" deal with his chief rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, who ostensibly won the incredibly broken elections that ran recently. Mr. Tsvangirai is understandably pissed off since Mr. Mugabe has been brazenly abducting dozens of MDC party members and harassing civilian supporters of the Movement for Democratic Change. 

Amid the intense international opprobrium of Mr. Mugabe's regime, his comments are presumably an open challenge to all comers, and an especial reminder that African countries are more than welcome to have a crack at it as well. 

The interesting thing about the Al-Jazeera English article that reported on these comments is that they had absolutely nothing to do with the body of the story, which was about the collapsing Zimbabwean economy and the cholera epidemic that has killed over a thousand so far. The quotes from Mr. Mugabe were a perfunctory indication of the well-known fact that Mr. Mugabe is batshit crazy. 

For some reason it's bad form to imply that the reason Zimbabwe has completely fallen down is Mr. Mugabe's demented rule, so Al-Jazeera English felt it was more appropriate to simply juxtapose the two pieces of information and let the readers connect the dots. Good job, Al-Jazeera English!

In other news, I will do my very best to write more about people, ideas, and countries from Latin America that I don't like, as I have been harping on about Zimbabwe and Thailand enough. Fingers? Crossed.