Jinn of Current Events

Boston Globe has a nice profile of Victor Davis Hanson: A fifth-generation raisin farmer in California's fertile Central Valley, Hanson is also a historian of ancient Greece, a lyrical defender of American agrarianism, and a prolific contributor to conservative opinion magazines. His columns so caught the fancy of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney that he has enjoyed audiences with both. It's hard to say which is stranger: that a raisin farmer should exert such influence, or that a classics scholar should. ... Hanson wields a few simple ideas with blunt force. Western culture, in his view, emanates from ancient Greece and prizes consensual government, private markets, self-criticism, and rational inquiry. Where such values are found, political, economic, and military preeminence follow. The non-Western world lags behind the West because it does not share in the Greek cultural legacy, having opted instead for despotism, theocracy, illiberal markets, and the plain old laziness that has men whiling away afternoons playing backgammon in the cafes of the Middle East. 

Bob Geldof, the famous Irish pop star, made a statement in Ethiopia calling on Africa to throw out Mugabe: He is engaging in state-sponsored terror and famine and that cannot be allowed... He is a shame on the face of Africa. Geldof is loud, clear, and right: You people should be demanding that Mugabe steps down. I don't care where he goes. He can join Idi Amin in Saudi Arabia, he can join the ghetto of tyrants, but get him out of there. The Times reports that Geldof called on African leaders to challenge despots if they wanted the rest of the world to take them seriously. He also had a few choice words about the irresponsibility of the European Union.