20 March 2002

How big? Yesterday morning, I heard a radio report about an iceberg the size of Cyprus that had broken off from Antarctica. Today's Guardian calls it the size of Wales. Radio 4's Today Programme decided to determine just how big the iceberg really is. Its conclusion is that Cambridgeshire is about right, but Cyprus is several times bigger. Shouldn't it be a simple matter for reporters to get size right? 12:43:03 PM

The right thing In the end, against expectations, South African president Thabo Mbeki did the right thing. It's conceivable that the Commonwealth could have suspended Zimbabwe on the two votes of Australian prime minister John Howard and Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo. But it really needed Mbeki's assent to make the point. How much difference will it make? Even from London, the Commonwealth's sway sometimes seems pretty feeble. But Mugabe's isolation from the leaders that really count in Africa will, eventually, tell. It's sad, but we can expect that things will get worse for the people in Zimbabwe before they get better. The first step in improvement, however, came with the decisive rejection by the global community -- Africa included -- of the election result. 12:38:06 PM

© Copyright 2002 Lance Knobel.