Soob

The UN world food summit met today in Rome to address the current food crisis brought on by various factors such as high energy costs, exploding demand as countries like China and India continue to develop a robust and demanding middle classes, the diversion of food crop to energy crop and the governmental subsidizing of western farmers.

The comedy began when Robert Mugabe side stepped a Euro travel ban (it being a UN sponsored event and all) and sauntered into Rome as a concerned representative. Naturally the western delegates were horrified and rightfully so. Never the less, Robby took the stage and put on a decidedly defensive (and rather well imagined) act. He extolled the virtues of his rein creating some 300,000 proud new land owners, apparently having forgotten the some 2 million not so proud citizens who own exactly zero land and indeed have fled the country. Mostly to South Africa where they've been set upon by hyper-xenophobes, but that's a post for another time.

Mugabe went on to bemoan the various NGO's that empower governmental opposition (read Morgan Tsangirai) and utilize food as a political lever. Interestingly enough Mugabe has apparently forgotten his own use of not only food but also water in a very similar fashion. More comedy came about when Mugabe used the term "democracy" in highlighting his brilliant rule. Democracy, apparently, entails not only stealing elections but also having your oppositions leadership savagely beaten. I'm fairly certain that physically pounding your opponent into surrender is more in line with the UFC than democratic rule.

Unsurprisingly, Mugabe and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (who couldn't help but re-hash the whole "Israel wiped off the earth" diatribe) were left off the guest list for the evening ceremonial dinner. We have it on good authority that in lieu of their attending the dinner, two took in a screening of "Sex and the City" and then retired to Robby's palatial suite where they set about comparing notes on how to maintain global pariah-dom, collapse a state through reckless rule and generally piss off incredibly large amounts of people.