The Axis of Evil is up to its old tricks -- at least, if you believe Robert Mugabe's official spokesman. America and Britain are plotting an invasion of Zimbabwe, but this time at least we've had the smarts to make sure we don't have to do the dirty work ourselves. Comrade George Charamba had the scoop for the state-run Herald newspaper:

‘‘The British and the Americans are dead set on bringing Zimbabwe back to the UN Security Council, they are also dead set on ensuring that there is an invasion of Zimbabwe but without themselves carrying it out. In those circumstances they will stop at nothing including abusing both the office and personnel of the secretary general.

‘‘We would not be surprised if they spring a ‘mission' involving the UN.''

Would that this were true. It's rapidly becoming a cliché to describe just about everything as the most pressing item in the incoming President's in-tray -- terrorism, the economic crisis, you name it -- but while the growing humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe may not occupy the headline writers' attention to the same extent, it is urgent and it is getting worse.

Having evidently got bored of watching his people starve, Mugabe is now presiding over a cholera epidemic that has claimed hundreds of lives and could kill tens of thousands more unless urgent action is taken. The outbreak has been made worse by the breakdown of the water and sanitation systems even in Harare, and with no water, drugs, blood or food for patients, and intermittent electricity supplies, the hospitals are shutting down.

Meanwhile the international community has ratcheted up the rhetoric, but little else. While the EU extends its travel ban on Zimbabwean government officials (a ban that seems to be waived every time Mugabe is invited to an international summit, or a Pope dies), the regime returns the favour; a group of international mediators, including Kofi Annan and Jimmy Carter, were denied entry to Zimbabwe last month. (Mind you, I wouldn't let those two in either.) As for regional bodies such as the African Union and the Southern African Development Community, they're busily putting pressure on the opposition MDC to accept a "power-sharing" agreement that could scarcely be more worthless if it were signed in bullshit.  

Thanks to the desperate situation in Afghanistan and the bungled aftermath of the Iraq invasion, "regime change" is the dirtiest of phrases, and not one that's likely to be on Obama staffers' lips. Remaining options, though, are few and far between. Economic sanctions can have little effect on a country with no economy, and diplomacy is clearly a non-starter without proper regional support. But the stance of the Mbeki government in South Africa has been shamefully weak (a dereliction of duty that stands second only to their policies on AIDS), and only the possibility of a refugee crisis on its border with Zimbabwe, combined with the harsher rhetoric of Mbeki's presumed successor, Jacob Zuma, holds out any real hope for a more pro-active South African role. By then, however, it will be too late for those who are dying as the infrastructure of the Zimbabwean state collapses around their ears, taking their lives with it.

In case there was any confusion over whether or not Africa was fucked up beyond comprehension, the inflation rate in Zimbabwe has now reached 231,000,000 %. An inflation rate, or anything, of that magnitude is literally beyond comprehension, as in, I have no idea what that even means. Prices must be doubling every couple of seconds; by the time one can even take money out of their pocket to pay for something, the price would have already gone up. 231,000,000 isn't a number, it's a concept, like light years; I have no frame of reference for what 231 million of anything even is. Which is more surprising, the 100-Billion-Dollar Bill, or the presence of food in Africa?

A chronological list of headlines on NewZimbabwe.com, which hails itself as "The best Zimbabwe news site on the world wide web," tells the story as it unfolded:

January. 2007: Zimbabwe's inflation hits 1,593%
March, 2007: RBZ rolls out $5 000 and $50 000 note
April, 2007: Zimbabwe's inflation races to 3,714 percent
August, 2007: Zimbabwe's inflation rockets to 7,634%
August, 2007: RBZ unveils $200,000 dollar bill
September, 2007: Zimbabwe's inflation doubles to 14,850%
October, 2007: How Zimbabwe Lost Control of Inflation

Flash forward and move on to the international press as I assume the NewZimbabwe.com staff has starved to death:

May, 2008: Zimbabwe Inflation Now Over 1 Million Percent (Boston.com)
August, 2008: Zimbabwe Inflation Hits 11,200,000 Percent (CNN.com)
October, 2008: Zimbabwe Inflation Hits 231 Million Percent (Telegraph)

The desperate situation in Zimbabwe is deteriorating yet further ahead of next week's presidential run-off election between Robert Mugabe and the opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, who was arrested and released over the weekend for the fifth time of the "campaign." Tsvangirai's deputy, Tendai Biti, is currently being held in an undisclosed location, with treason charges supposedly being prepared against him.

Meanwhile, the Mugabe re-election drive is in full swing: under the oversight of the army and police, killings, beatings and intimidation are being employed to cow the Flickring The Revolution?: Sokwanele documents horrors no conventional reporter can get nearpopulation into voting for ZANU-PF, with scarce food rations being used as political weapons to secure the support of a starving electorate. Voter registration in MDC areas is being severely curtailed, and officials have taken to simply handing out billions of dollars of Zimbabwe's all-but-worthless currency in return for votes. Mugabe bellows darkly of "going to war" if the country is "taken over by lackeys." Given the vast scale on which these elections are being perverted, he may not need to.

Reporting restrictions make it difficult to know exactly what is happening on the ground, with most Western media banned from the country or operating under intolerable circumstances. But information about the harassment and violence being suffered by opposition activists is filtering out by other methods, some of them remarkably innovative. Chief among these has been the advent of blogging, which we have seen in previous situations such as the Israeli conflict with Hezbollah two years ago and the short-lived Burmese uprising of last autumn.

Where mainstream media are sometimes unable to operate freely, whether due to restrictions imposed by repressive regimes or the exigencies of wartime conditions, lone bloggers have often come to the fore in passing on vital information denied to us through traditional means. In Lebanon in 2006, Beirut residents sat on their balconies describing Israeli aircraft coming overhead; students in Haifa liveblogged from bomb shelters until the all clear was sounded. Some of these firsthand accounts provided valuable context to the reports on the evening news bulletins; others challenged the conventional wisdom we were being fed by our media, whatever you thought that was.

A similar pattern emerged in Burma last year, with the junta's clampdown on reporting from inside the country making traditional reporting all but impossible. Small independent newspapers, resistance groups and bloggers filled the gap, with photos of demonstrations being posted to the web and picked up by news agencies hungry for fresh pictures --- any pictures --- to accompany their stories in the era of 24-hour rolling TV news. But the shortcomings of these outlets quickly became clear; with limited internet penetration into the impoverished country, it was easy enough for the government to block access to blogging platforms for residents of Rangoon and other cities, and the piecemeal supply of information eventually dried up.

The same sort of problem applies in Zimbabwe, whose citizens have long had more pressing problems than a dearth of affordable broadband connections. But information is coming through, thanks in part to the advent of trends such as microblogging, made possible through platforms like Twitter, which (for the benefit of readers as technologically backward as I am) allows users to post information from any internet connection or, crucially, a mobile phone, and makes it easy for others to access the resulting updates. Organisations such as Sokwanele, a civic action group operating out of Zimbabwe and neighbouring countries, are collating information from local activists and observers and disseminating it via RSS feeds and Twitter, and posting photos of demonstrations and police brutality to specially set up Flickr accounts, in ways which the authorities are simply powerless to stop. They even have an interactive Google map charting instances of voter fraud and intimidation by the authorities, and you can follow Morgan Tsvangirai's campaign via Google Earth.

This is not the first time that services like Twitter have been used to outwit security services. A Berkeley student covering an anti-government protest in Egypt used his cellphone to post the one-word update "Arrested" when the police picked him up, and was released within the day. But Zimbabwean activists can count on no such deus ex machina; no embassy or consulate is waiting to spring into action to release those incarcerated in Mugabe's jails. And this is where the limitations of technological advances are most evident. As in Burma, telling the outside world what is happening to you is one thing, and getting them to help you is quite another. Whether through impotence, overstretch or apathy, there is little appetite for Western intervention in the wake of Iraq (as discussed by Daniel last week), and Thabo Mbeki's South Africa, the one regional agent who might realistically exert some diplomatic leverage, has been utterly spineless in the face of Mugabe's brutal campaign against his own people.

And so we watch and wait for the results of next week's elections; and, thanks to the bravery and ingenuity of a few committed activists, we have a front row seat for Zimbabwe's continuing death agony. But we're unlikely to get up from the sofa, no matter what happens. So, yes, the revolution will be televised - but to what end?

When Zimbabwe recently cracked down on CARE—a leading humanitarian organization focused on global poverty which has spent more than $100 million in Zimbabwe in the last 16 years—I started thinking about how some charities do amazing work, but somehow don’t leave the people they serve any better off. This month, CARE would have fed more than 110,000 people who will now go hungry because President Robert Mugabe has limited the charity's access. It's upsetting that 110,000 people depend on CARE every month, and leads me to wonder whether charities like CARE and Feed the Children could be doing more to fight hunger and poverty long term, instead of always focusing on the immediate.

This is a tricky question. If someone is starving in front of you, it’s unimaginable to say to her, “Well, I’m going to give my money to an advocacy group that is helping to eliminate hunger long term.” But if that person is dependent on handouts from you and others, there’s little chance the problem will ever be solved.

Judaism places a high priority on giving time, money and resources to those in need. Over and over again, the Torah commands us to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger among us. We are to provide food and clothing for those who need them, heal the sick, and bury the dead. But of course, it’s not that simple. Thousands of charities compete for our support every day, dealing with everything from hunger relief in Africa and animal cruelty in the States to global warming. Kids Can't Survive: without CARE

Maimonides is famous for his ladder of tzedakah, or hierarchy of giving. The highest form of tzedakah, according to Maimonides, is to give an interest free loan, or to enter into a business partnership. To help someone get back on her feet and provide for herself is considered higher than providing immediate relief to a problem.

In some cases, immediate relief is all that is needed. In the aftermath of major natural disasters, immediate support in the form of food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical supplies is absolutely necessary, and may be all that can be reasonably done. But when we’re dealing with a long term problem with no end in sight, it may be better to think big picture and give to charities that are working on the roots of our problems, not the buds.

You'd think the headline—Robert Mugabe's militia burns opponent's wife alive—would say it all, but it doesn't. Seven of Mugabe's thugs attacked Dadirai Chipiro, the wife of Mhondoro district opposition leader Patson Chipiro. "They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window." They had to have beaten her severely before burning her to death (along with much of her village), since according to the coroner's report, "all hands and legs were broken...the cause of death [w]as haemorrhaging and severe burns."

By mounting a coup against a government to which he no longer has any legitimateRobert Mugabe: Beneficiary of the Iraq War claim, Mugabe has done the world the clarifying favor of removing any objections to an intervention in Zimbabwe on grounds of national sovereignty: Whatever constraints one thinks sovereignty does or does not impose on foreign powers' actions in a state, Zimbabwe's sovereign authority resides with Morgan Tsvangirai and the Movement for Democratic Change. Since Mugabe has usurped that authority, there is no conflict with national sovereignty, or any other provisions of international law, to prohibit an external intervention to enforce the results of the election.

In practice, of course, an external intervention means a (mostly) American deployment. Without American support, as Shmuel Rosner and Adam LeBor have been discussing, the international community is helpless to do anything about humanitarian crises. Which is why nothing will be done. The case for an international mandate to arrest Mugabe and restore democracy in Zimbabwe is so straightforward that it might still be possible, despite the damage the Bush administration has done the the US's bargaining power, to assemble broad international support for such an operation. But what army would we do it with? And how would we begin to pay for it?

Resources are scarce—that's the foundational premise of economic theory. Every single day in Iraq costs $720 million dollars + approximately 16 man-hours of labor x 150,000 men (and some women); there's a lot you can do with that much capital. You can give it all back to taxpayers. You can invest it in domestic projects. You can use it to pay down the national debt. You can use it to fund and staff a massive global anti-poverty campaign, or anti-hunger campaign, or anti-disease campaign. And you can use it to intervene to save democracy in places like Zimbabwe or shut down killing fields in places like Darfur. Humanitarian crises happen frequently. And as long as the armed forces of the United States remain over-deployed, the prospects of any humanitarian crisis being resolved in any non-disastrous way are minimal.

Never mind the sunk cost fallacies that keep propagandism for the Iraq war going; to argue credibly and honestly for the continuation of the war, one has to be willing to argue not just that it's a worthwhile cause, but that it is a uniquely important cause that justifies losing the opportunity to attend to any of the world's problems which our commitment to Iraq prevents us from doing. How sad that it should fall to monsters like Mugabe and the Janjaweed of Sudan to expose the essential fraudulence of our foreign policy debates.

Christopher Hitchens wants to know why Nelson Mandela hasn't denounced Robert Mugabe, and insists that "[b]y his silence about what is happening in Zimbabwe, Mandela is making himself complicit in the pillage and murder of an entire nation, as well as the strangulation of an important African democracy." The most generous interpretation of this sentence is that Hitchens doesn't know what 'complicit' means.

The thing is, Mandela has denounced Mugabe. He has described Mugabe as aMadiba With Springbok Captain Francois Pienaar: The founding image of the rainbow nation paradigm example of African "'tyrants' who cling to power...'who have made enormous wealth, leaders who once commanded liberation armies.' They had come to 'despise the very people who put them in power' and 'think it is their privilege to be there for eternity.'" For good measure, Mandela added that "'we have to be ruthless in denouncing such leaders.'"

That denunciation of Mugabe came a year into Mandela's retirement from politics, when he was already eighty-two years old, at the height of a political, agricultural, and financial crisis in Zimbabwe. It made no difference in Zimbabwe whatsoever. So Hitchens' notion that "the smallest word" from Mandela would make a "huge difference" is patent nonsense. His complaint amounts to accusing Mandela of being culpable for "the pillage and murder of an entire nation" because he hasn't denounced Mugabe frequently or recently enough to satisfy Christopher Hitchens, regardless of the negligible practical effect of such a denunciation. Which is a distinctly less compelling indictment.

Incidentally, Hitchens' failure to give an answer to his own question isn't for lack of having received one. George Bizos told Hitchens that Mandela is "a very old man" whose "doctors have advised him to avoid anything stressful." Well, that just won't do it for Hitchens, who insinuates that Bizos—the heroic human rights activist and counselor to the defendants in the Rivonia trial as well as (more recently) to Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai—is prevaricating to cover up for Mandela's "squalid compromise."

It can't be that Bizos is stating the simple truth that Mandela is a frail ninety-year-old man whose body has been wrecked by decades of abuse and malnutrition and who lives in constant pain. It can't be that finally after all these years, his mind is beginning to show signs of what happens to a human mind after enduring for so long: Just before the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and England last year, Mandela mistakenly called his beloved Springboks 'the All Blacks,' the nickname of their arch-nemesis New Zealand. That's not a minor lapse. It would be like a passionate fan of the Red Sox inexplicably calling them 'the Yankees,' at least if his support of the Red Sox were a profound symbol of his nation's post-apartheid reconciliation with which everyone from his country is intimately familiar.

South African blogger Michael Trapido puts things more politely than I can: "Madiba, of all people, has merited his greatness and earned his rest. While we would all love to see him as much as we can, exerting pressure will only shorten his time with us and be of benefit to nobody." Less politely, Hitchens believes Mandela owes it to Hitchens to give himself a coronary episode. Otherwise he's a squalid moral compromiser with Zimbabwean blood on his hands.

Next week in Slate: Christopher Hitchens explains that Martin Luther King's silence on genocide in Darfur proves that the once great man has descended into the squalor of moral relativism.

Lord knows I am no fan of British PM Gordon Brown. But he’s earned my respect this week, because he’s told the organisers of an upcoming EU - African Union Summit in Portugal that he may not be showing up. Why? Because the grandees have, in their ineffable wisdom, invited Robert Mugabe – despite the fact that the old tyrant is subject to an EU-wide travel ban that prevents him, in theory, from entering any member state.

Britain will adopt an "empty chair" policy and stay away if, as expected, the Zimbabwean President attends after the EU suspends its ban on him travelling to Europe.

Portugal, which has called the first EU-AU summit for seven years, has invited Mr Mugabe because other African leaders want him to attend. If the invitation were withdrawn, the meeting could collapse as other African nations would almost certainly pull out.

My response to these “other African nations” is fairly simple. Fuck them. Fuck Robert Mugabe, fuck Thabo Mbeki, and fuck all his other cheerleaders in southern Africa. This disgusting man is lionised throughout the continent as one of the last of the great anti-colonialist revolutionaries. Well, Bob and his chums threw off the yoke of white rule a long, long time ago. And now his nation is in tatters, and his people are subjugated and starving, and all as a direct result of his misrule. It’s time to stop pouring Gatorade over each other and get serious. If the AU really has pretensions to become a strong voice for African nations, then it's time for them to step up to the plate. We’ve been waiting long enough.

And shame on the EU, too, for scurrying to appease a murderous dictator for the sake of a photo-op and the saving of face. The travel ban on Mugabe and his pals, and the freezing of their assets in Europe (which are, no doubt, considerable) was the softest option available to the Europeans at the time – but even this limited slap on the wrists is now, apparently, to be waived. What's the point of approving targeted sanctions on the Mugabe regime if you're going to invite the bastard for cocktails?

If the British government are serious about refusing to share a conference hall with this scumbag, and we leave an empty chair at the summit in December, then I for one could even find it in myself to be a wee bit proud of our leaders that day.

Could South Africa intervene in Zimbabwe to rescue Robert Mugabe? Both countries train each other's military forces and, as James Kirchik points out in The New Republic,

As members of the SADC, South Africa and Zimbabwe are also signatories to that organization's Mutual Defense Pact. Article 7 of the agreement stipulates that "No action shall be taken to assist any State Party in terms of this Pact, save at the State Party's own request or with its consent." Thus, Mugabe can continue to run a police state and his neighbors can't do anything about it without his permission. Conversely, if Mugabe feels that the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), his opposition, poses a threat, he could theoretically ask SADC members to help him stamp it out.