FROM CATHY BUCKLE IN ZIMBABWE

"This letter is being sent out three days later than normal because I am now entering the 92nd hour with only enough electricity for lights in my home. At midday on Friday the voltage to my home crashed and the power is insufficient to heat the water geyser, run a fridge or stove or even boil a kettle. 25 telephone calls to the electricity supplier in the last four days, a personal visit to the faults office, a number of offers to provide fuel or go and collect electricians are all to no avail.

In the villages less than 15 kilometres out of Marondera there is also no electricity which means the grinding mills are not working. I was told by a friend that there are scores of people now going without food and that the atmosphere is extremely tense. This morning there is literally mud coming out of the taps in my home which means there are problems pumping water too. Zimbabwe is now entering the darkest of days. It is hard to describe how anyone is surviving now and this week I had the most amazing encounter which helped me put my own problems into perspective.

Standing at the entrance gates of a wholesaler there was a thin, gaunt, tired looking man. On the ground next to him was a small pile of empty cement bags. He bent and picked up a bag and held it towards me, asking me to buy it. An empty cement bag, turned inside out and with two crude holes cut into the top for handles. "Only thirty thousand dollars" the man said to me. This was literally just an empty cement bag, it hadn't been sewn, reinforced or even cleaned very well. I could think of no earthly reason why I would want an empty cement bag but the look in the mans eyes, the slight trembling of his hand and the thinness of his body gave me a whole lot of reasons. I gave the man forty thousand dollars and told him to keep the change. I took my cement bag and the man called out "God bless you, thank you," as I walked away. We both knew that the money I'd just handed over would buy the man just half a loaf of bread but to me, and obviously to him, selling cement bags enables a sliver of dignity to be maintained.

Please keep the people of Zimbabwe in your thoughts and prayers in these very hard times"

Source

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ELSEWHERE

Ralph Peters reports from Baghdad: "I'm trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it. Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills. And riding around with the U.S. Army, looking at things first-hand, is certainly a technique to which The New York Times wouldn't stoop in such an hour of crisis. Let me tell you what I saw anyway. Rolling with the "instant Infantry" gunners of the 1st Platoon of Bravo Battery, 4-320 Field Artillery, I saw children and teenagers in a Shia slum jumping up and down and cheering our troops as they drove by. Cheering our troops. All day - and it was a long day - we drove through Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Everywhere, the reception was warm. No violence. None. And no hostility toward our troops. Iraqis went out of their way to tell us we were welcome."

Muslim aggression in India too: "India was on high alert last night after a series of explosions tore through the country's holiest Hindu city, sparking fears of renewed communal violence. The blasts struck a crowded temple and the railway station in Varanasi, leaving at least 15 dead and scores injured. Religious institutions across the country, particularly Hindu temples, are braced for further attacks. Sniffer dogs have been deployed at religious sites in leading cities and devotees were being searched before being allowed to worship. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, appealed for calm, fearing a resurgence in violence between Hindus and Muslims. The attacks on the temple-studded city on the bank of the river Ganges came as Hindus prepared for one of their most important festivals".

Leftist principles in action: "Illinois Governor Blagojevich still continues to support a member of the racist, anti-Semitic and anti-gay organization Nation of Islam for a position on his hate crimes commission. The guy just refuses to admit he made a mistake and fix it. Obviously it's absurd for somebody who hates whites, gays and Jews to sit on that panel."

Surprise! Polling hanky panky from CBS "It appears that every other day there's a new poll released on President George Bush's job approval rating.... This time we're talking about a CBS poll that showed President Bush's approval rating at an all time low of 34%.... So, in an effort to turn the findings of bloggers and talk hosts, who caught CBS monkeying with the poll numbers, into a non-story, they decided to "out" themselves on their website, albeit in the guise of explaining how polls are conducted. CBS News explained to readers what most pollsters do when they conduct their telephone surveys, and then they dropped this little bomb in the midst of their explanation: Bush's favorability poll was weighted in favor of Democrats. Bush's 34% approval rating is a result of polling 37% Democrats, 28% Republicans and 35% other or independents. One can only imagine the affiliations of that 35%. Are they Libertarians? Socialists? Communists? Are some extreme right-wing militia-types, who hate Bush as much as the left?... Also, the poll fails to differentiate between registered voters, likely voters or people who don't even know they can vote."

Prof Bainbridge explains why Vermonters are leaving Vermont: "Might it be that Vermont's problems illustrate the social cost of high taxes, extensive regulation, and low growth policies? For individuals, Vermont has the 6th highest state tax burden in the country. For business, Vermont has one of the worst state business tax climates in the country, ranking 46th out of the 50 states. And then there's regulation..."

The usual Leftist "tolerance": "The abortion debate is unusually tense on the campus of Harvard University this semester, with abortion rights advocates allegedly tearing down pro-life posters that show a baby through the several stages of development. The Harvard Right to Life (HRL) group has named the in utero child featured on the posters Elena. Along with the photos of the baby are facts scribbled on the signs as if a child had drawn them. The most recent ad shows "Elena" at 8 weeks and labels distinct body parts, including the brain, skin, intestines, fingers and "my pumpin' heart". The student organization began posting the Elena ads in mid-February, according to HRL President Meghan Grizzle. The group posts a new ad in the series every week, and Grizzle said students have to replace them "a few times a day."

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here. On Social Security see Dick McDonald and for purely Australian news see Australian Politics (mirrored here).

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Practically all policies advocated by the Left create poverty. Leftists get the government to waste vast slabs of the country's labour-force on bureaucracy and paperwork and so load the burden of providing most useful goods and services onto fewer and fewer people. So fewer useful goods and services are produced to go around. That is no accident. The Left love the poor. The Left need the poor so that they can feel good by patronizing and "helping" them. So they do their best to create as many poor people as possible.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialistisch)

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