Mugabe cracks down.

World leaders of nations stretching from Canada to New Zealand have issued indignant (if impotent) condemnations of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe following a violent police crackdown on an anti-Mugabe protest in Harare last weekend. For once, even the usually politically docile African Union admitted that, at long last, they were "embarrassed" by the economic, social, and political disasters wrought by Mugabe.

I'm not sure why everyone picked now as the time to actually notice that Robert Mugabe is a dictatorial thug prone to using violence to keep himself in power. For over a decade, Mugabe has mobilized militias on behalf of his ruling ZANU-PF to attack and harass his political enemies, whether they're white commercial farmers, his country's supreme court judges, and as always, leaders (and members) of the Movement for Democratic Change. After all, it's hard to stay in power forever if your enemies are determined to vote you out, isn't it?

Why the world finds Mugabe's latest outrages more scandalous than other previous, virtually identical, such incidents is anyone's guess. It's impossible to believe they've only now noticed Mugabe's dictatorship, or the human misery Zimbabwe has been reduced to during his 27 year rule. We understand that South Africa keeps quiet on purpose, but what was everyone else's excuse? And more to the point, what makes them think that Mugabe is afraid of their condemnations?

Mugabe, who has in the past boasted about having a "degree in violence" couldn't care less about damaging Zimbabwe's relations with countries like Canada, the UK or Chile: he cares about staying in power. Financial sanctions? He's certainly not afraid of those. His money's already in the bank, and while it's almost impossible to imagine the citizens of Zimbabwe being any poorer than they are now, those are precisely the people who would be hurt by sanctions, not Mugabe.

Mugabe knows that talk is cheap, and he is definitely trying to hang on for the long haul. At 83, he's made the decision that he's going to die at the top. Are any of the countries who wag their fingers at Mugabe willing to lift a finger to actually oust him, or are they just going to wait until he kicks off and his equally repellent cronies fight each other to take his place?

You should know by now what the answer to that question is.

UPDATE: Mugabe tells all those foreign do-gooders what they can go and do with their self-righteous complaining!