Zimbabwe

Despite chronic scandals that suggest it can't clean up even its own offices, the United Nations wants to manage the weather of the entire planet. In the name of cooling global warming, the U.N. is steering toward a role as chief broker for assigning and trading national rights to emit carbon dioxide. The plan amounts to a tax on high per-capita carbon emitters, such as the United States, and subsidies for low emitters, such as Laos and Equatorial Guinea. Unfortunately, a global carbon tax-cum-redistribution system would likely chill the productivity of free societies and subsidize some of the world's worst regimes.

Two women, sitting on stools, laughing, each say, "Are you OK?" They seem to be talking to each other, but are not. And neither one is OK. Not by a long shot. In the Continuum, in its original 2006 Obie Award-winning production directed by Robert O'Hara (Philadelphia Theatre Company is merely presenting, at Plays & Players), is remarkable: funny, sad, meaningful and splendidly performed. The many women played by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter, who wrote the show together, never speak to each other, but only to characters we can't see. Central to the plot are Nia, a dropout teenager in the Los Angeles' South Central, and Abigail, a professional broadcaster in Zimbabwe who is a wife and mother.

When I was in elementary school, it was popular to pass around a little blue canister and offer a few pennies to a new organization: the United Nations. We were told the U.N. would be an oasis of hope in a world torn by war and hatred. We were duped. In its long and spotted history, the United Nations has been a forum of hypocrisy. It has shown selective concern for contemporary genocide - but only when its member states decide who will benefit the most economically from the latest horror.

Ex-Nicaragua prez jailed for illegally diverting $100M A federal judge sentenced former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Aleman to 20 years in prison for money laundering in a ruling read publicly yesterday. Aleman was accused of illegally diverting $100 million in government funds to his party's election campaigns during his tenure in office, which ended in January 2002. Judge Juana Mendez cited crimes of fraud, misappropriation of public funds, embezzlement, criminal association and electoral violations.

Joseph Makosana, 48, is a war veteran who fought to free his country from white colonial rule. He recently took over a white-owned farm, one of the thousands that once helped feed southern Africa. Now, he's struggling to grow corn. Gerry Southey, 40, is a white farmer. President Robert Mugabe's government seized his farm two years ago and gave it to poor black people. Now, it's a wasteland. The man-made roots of southern Africa's hunger crisis are visible in the lives of these two men at opposite ends of Zimbabwe's controversial land-reform policies.

A lament often heard from Zimbabweans is that the world pays attention to their country when (A) there's an election, or (B) policies are undertaken that affect the nation's white minority. A case in point is the eviction notices being served to Zimbabwe's white landowners. Deplorable as these evictions may be, most would agree that one particular horror visited on hundreds of thousands of other Zimbabweans, including employees of the evicted landowners, is a lot worse. That horror is torture, a favorite political tool of the corrupt and violent regime of President Robert Mugabe.

Crispen Masuka and his family traveled 7,800 miles from their home in Zimbabwe to stand in the pulpits of U.S. congregations and tell their story. It is a sad account about a sister and her husband who died of AIDS, and a country and continent so ravaged by the disease that thousands die each day. Perhaps, Masuka says, if Americans who love God see him and hear him, in the flesh, they will want to help. "So many young families are dying and leaving small children with no one to care," said Masuka, 53. "It happened in my family, so I resolved that I should do something about it. " What Masuka has done, with the help of local sponsors, is to enroll as a psychology major at Immaculata College, studying to become a counselor qualified to work with AIDS families in his homeland.

Bornwell Chakaodza thinks the government of Zimbabwe has it out for him. He has been editor of the Zimbabwe Standard for six weeks. The police have arrested him five times already. Chakaodza, 49, was first hauled in after his weekly wrote that the government imported water cannons to control Zimbabwe's increasingly restless townships. The story was true - the paper even had photos - but the government denied it. Then he wrote about his night in Harare's putrid jail, with 24 people packed in a cell designed for six. That merited another arrest, this time for unlawfully disclosing police activities.

Tourists have abandoned Zimbabwe since the deterioration of the country's political climate, contributing to a severe economic decline that economists say shows little sign of recovery. The disappearance of international travelers is painfully evident at this vacation center in western Zimbabwe, where the Zambezi River plunges 300 feet into a cloud of mist that has created a rain forest in the middle of the dry African savannah. The downtown casino is quiet, except for a few lonely slot-machine players.

While three million Zimbabweans face a worsening food shortage, the southern African nation last month rejected a U.S. offer of 10,000 metric tons of whole grain corn because the shipment might contain genetically modified grain. The U.S. government redirected the gift to other hungry African nations after Zimbabwe refused to waive a requirement that imported grain be certified as non-genetically modified organisms. The U.S. government does not segregate GMO grains from conventional crops.