Zimbabwe is too important not to blog

May 30, 2000 9:04 PM

Zimbabwe is too important not to blog My pal, technical saviour, and usurper in the race toward pessimism and gloom Luke Tymowski has quietly beavered away producing a Tomalak's Ream-esque daily digest of Zimbabwe news. Benighted Jakob Nielsen just finished saying that Web writing like this is the only way to go. Does he read Luke? He oughta. A lotta people oughta.
posted by joeclark (4 comments total)

That link is busted, use this one for Luke's "Tripping!". I came across this site a while ago and decided that too many of the links were to British sources. While it's nice to have it all in one place, I can find that stuff on my own. How about some alternate perspectives? Admittedly they're hard to find online.. I spent a couple of afternoons looking for good sources of news and didn't turn up diddly.

My main problem with the British reporting (other than the fact that it's the British who started this whole mess) is that far too many of the stories I've read play on white fears of the black bogey monster. I admit I know next to nothing about Zimbabwe, except for the fact that it was under colonial rule until just a few decades ago, and that the white farmers have no right to the land they're dying to hold on to.
posted by sudama at 8:22 AM on May 31, 2000

i'm totally with you, sudama, on considering the source of the news stories but i think the difficulty of this whole situation is determining what gives anyone the right to any parcel of land? how do you determine the 'right' owner of the farmland? i mean, some of these farmers are sixth generation on their land...

i don't know. do you?
posted by palegirl at 9:22 AM on May 31, 2000

Who else out there is now or has ever set up a short-term newsblog for a pressing issue or set of events? It's a mutation of blogging that I thought was uncommon. People with short term blog-projects should store their work.

Even when the news links are dead, the comments will survive.

Just remember: "Le journaliste est l'historien de l'instant"
(Oh and I guess I could mention this little thing if anyone cares:Coup in Fiji Web Links -- not that MF should be used for this sort of thing.)
posted by rschram at 9:24 AM on May 31, 2000

"Benighted" means "in the dark" or "ignorant", which doesn't seem to fit the intended meaning.

I think it's good that Luke's doing this blog; it's not just about the farm and land crisis, it's about the deteriorating political situation there. And while it's clearly not a huge news item in the US, except for the violence, European and African leaders seem to be giving it great attention.

One of the terrific things I think a lot of Americans don't realize is the extent to which places like Africa are becoming self-sufficient. Mbeki is trying to follow Mandela's footsteps and become the dominant continental leader, South Africa is using its wealth to support realistic solutions, and in Sierra Leone, most of the "UN troops" are an African force called ECOMOG that was formed precisely to come up with an "African solution" to the problem.
posted by dhartung at 10:21 AM on May 31, 2000