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Showing posts from July, 2008

The mind of the single-issue man

Today's Montreal Gazette contains, on its op-ed page, a stunning apologia for Robert Mugabe written by Mohamed Elmasry, national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress. I have neither the time nor inclination to detail how astonishingly wrongheaded this piece is - though what the hell, I'll pick at a few points: 1) it hasn't been about the white farmers for at least five years now, and anyways, the "land reform" wasn't; 2) the 2002 election was highly questionable and is now hardly relevant; 3) the country is in ruins not because of "Western sanctions" but because of jawdropping kleptocracy and mismanagement; 4) describing widespread violence, starvation as a political tool, and other horrific abuses as "clumsy" is, to grossly understate, a wee bit disingenuous. But what is actually interesting about this piece is the glimpse it gives us of the single-issue mind: a person who has only one sociopolitical litmus test, and views all even