Passing Shots

Mugabe in Zimbabwe is continuing to act like dictators always do: he basically tells Zimbabweans to eat cake while he and his minions party like it's 1999. Oh, and did I mention that he's taking a cut from everyone's wages to pay for his party?

Police in Zimbabwe imposed a three-month ban on political rallies and demonstrations across large parts of Harare today as Robert Mugabe, the world’s oldest head of state, celebrated his 83rd birthday.

The blanket ban, announced in state-controlled newspapers, came as supporters of the hardline President prepared a lavish cake-and-fizzy-drinks birthday party in the central city of Gweru, to be held on Saturday to mark…

The party has been deducting money from civil servants’ wages and bullying near-bankrupt businesses for donations to raise the 300 million Zimbabwean dollars (about £30,000 at real exchange rates) to pay for the celebration on Saturday. In attendance will be the 21st of February Movement, an organisation of children established with the sole purpose of gathering on this day each year to pay homage.

Iraqi insurgents detonated the third bomb attached to a chlorine gas canister in recent weeks. They're trying to cause a mass casualty incident with a chemical weapon. The insurgents are trying to escalate the violence to a level beyond the carnage that they already have been able to inflict with conventional weapons alone. Where are the Muslims calling for an end to this carnage? After all, the insurgents are targeting other Muslims. The silence is deafening.

Somalia will get a contingent of African Union troops, which will be followed by UN peacekeepers in the near future. All the same, the threat posed by the Islamists remains.

Don Surber thinks that the Brits may show the way to win in Iraq. The handover of Basra means that the British task in Southern Iraq may be coming to a close. This means that they've accomplished what they set out to do. Considering that the level of violence there was never anywhere close to the violence in the Baghdad/Anbar region, the Brits were able to focus on other aspects of rebuilding besides security. The situation facing US forces in and around Baghdad and Anbar is far more complicated than what the Brits have dealt with. This isn't to minimize what the Brits did, but puts it into context.

Tom Maguire has more on the Libby trial now that the case has gone to the jury to deliberate.

This is just horrific - an honor killing in the UK.