One thing about reading the Big G as you do, is that you learn about all sorts of faraway places. Like National Geographic, but with less beautiful photography and even less whining. Today, for example, we cannot ignore what might be the first good news in a long time for Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is a country everybody knows is African by the name, but they know little more. Actually, Zimbabwe is one of the major hotspots in Africa to watch. And it just got really interesting again.

For the last 350 years, Robert Mugabe has been the dictator there. He is one of those “democratically elected” dictators, who drives his people into unimaginable poverty and starvation, yet wins re-elections with 99.9% of the vote. Sometimes more. And sometimes more than that.

Attempts to unseat Mugabe—who is totally insane—are always unsuccessful. However, in 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai and his party garnered enough votes to sit at the table and technically be a co-ruler. To everyone in Zimbabwe, it was evident that Tsvangirai had a vast majority of votes—Mugabe generously agreed to overlook that fact, and allowed Tsvangirai to share power. Tsvangirai agreed, only because this was the furthest anyone had ever gotten, and this was enormously far.

Gormogons Spotlight On: ZimbabweSimply put, the country is dying. There is virtually no economy, donations to help with AIDS and starvation are blatantly stolen, and the people are trapped in a country with no hope. People are dying there. The Czar has had email conversations off and on with someone in Harare, who says it is as bad as the rumors say; the correspondant (who is non-native and therefore is not starving or dying of disease) sleeps lightly with a firearm, and has had to shoot armed people breaking into his home on more than one occasion. And he is running out of ammunition, since you cannot get it there.

One perfect example of the lunacy that is Robert Mugabe comes from 1999, when he ordered the white farmers—whose subsistence farming offered the only genuine employment and food to the residents—to forfeit their lands without compensation. Mugabe then divided up the land into small, useless parcels and ordered blacks to take responsibility for farming them. Except the people who received the land parcels were not farmers and had no idea what to do. The whites left the country, for the most part, and left with whatever knowledge was needed to keep crops growing. Mugabe naturally blames the black landowners, who are for all intents and purposes government indentured servants, for not knowing how to farm. But he also blames the self-exiled whites for letting it get that way. Meanwhile, Mugabe dines well in his palace each night.

Since 2008, Morgan Tsvangirai began to construct what might be the rudiments of a real government—something Mugabe never got around to in decades of rule—by appointing ministers and starting to build an administration.

Tsvangirai announced that the delightfully named Roy Bennett would be named the deputy minister of agriculture. Without explanation, Mugabe ordered Bennett arrested and charged with terrorism, weapons possession, and the awesomely medieval “banditry.” With no shred of evidence, police naturally released him on bail. And Mugabe had him prompty re-arrested. Why? Because Bennett is white, and is one of the few people still there who knows how to make Zimbabwean agriculture productive again. And Mugabe knows full well that the first thing Bennett would need to do is repair the land ownership situation away from totalitarian redistribution of property back to the legal owners. Therefore, in Mugabe’s evil and warped mind, that is terrorism and banditry.

In response, Tsvangirai is now openly calling for UN elections to remove Mugabe from power once and for all (except Tsvangirai, who is new to governement, fails to recognize that Mugabe is a spawn of the UN and their ideal African ruler—a progressive parasite who sucks money off Americans). He is boycotting (jamming) Mugabe’s efforts to maintain the illusion of legitimate rule. This is the most serious blow to Mugabe’s dictatorship yet.

With luck, within a year, we could perhaps see Mugabe arrested and a proper democratic government restored in Zimbabwe. Good luck to Tsvangirai—so far, he seems to be a good leader. He could become a great leader. But the country has been through so much, and now has so little, he must avoid the temptation to simply switch places with Mugabe.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.