KATHA POLLITT AND CHRIS NOLAN debate women and journalism.

MUGABE’S MISMANAGEMENT: Nick Kristof writes:

The hungry children and the families dying of AIDS here are gut-wrenching, but somehow what I find even more depressing is this: Many, many ordinary black Zimbabweans wish that they could get back the white racist government that oppressed them in the 1970’s.

“If we had the chance to go back to white rule, we’d do it,” said Solomon Dube, a peasant whose child was crying with hunger when I arrived in his village. “Life was easier then, and at least you could get food and a job.” . . .

When a white racist government was oppressing Zimbabwe, the international community united to demand change. These days, a black racist government is harming the people of Zimbabwe more than ever, and the international community is letting Mr. Mugabe get away with it. Our hypocrisy is costing hundreds of Zimbabwean lives every day.

But under Mugabe, they’ve got freedom! Er, well, no. . . . But that’s how it usually is with his ilk — you wind up with neither.

COLBY COSH is worried about bird flu and thinks preparations are inadequate. Colby writes:

Our one true weakness may be a general unfamiliarity with large-scale infectious disease — our lifelong experience of medicine as virtually omnipotent. Our post-Victorian forebears could be killed anytime by an ear infection or an inflamed scratch; they possessed few illusions about death. And yet they were almost unnervingly cheerful in the face of pestilence. In Edmonton, one November 1918 flu circular from the authorities concluded with the words “Keep smiling.” Even after four years of wartime slaughter and austerity — years endured only to be punctuated by global disease — no one thought this cretinous or trivial. The recriminations and carping that accompanied SARS, which took only 800 lives worldwide, suggest we may not bear up nearly so well if Big Flu really does emerge.

My great-great grandmother (who I never knew, but who my grandmother still talks about with great admiration and affection) worked at the Alabama Boys’ Industrial School during the 1918 flu epidemic and was for a while the only unaffected adult there. The sheer burden of trying to look after so many people who couldn’t really look after themselves (she organized the barely-functional to help the nonfunctional somewhat) nearly killed her, they say, but her collapse didn’t come until some people had recovered.

Yet the general tendency is to underestimate the pluck of modern folks — look at what happened on 9/11 — and while people do panic in the face of epidemics, there’s nothing new about that, either. Of course, preparation now beats panic later, and may even obviate the need.

Tamiflu is supposed to be fairly effective against bird flu, and governments are stockpiling it. But there won’t be enough for everyone. And, as with warfare, logistics gets less attention, but it often as important as the sexy stuff.

UPDATE: Derek Lowe says that guys like him are unlikely to be producing miracle drugs in the midst of an epidemic.

MORE COMPLAINTS about Google News.

TOM MAGUIRE has a Social Security roundup.

THE DEMOCRACY PROJECT BLOG has gotten a look at a draft of the FEC proposed regulations on Internet campaign speech.

UPDATE: Eugene Volokh finds the draft regulations a bit narrow: “I hope the FEC doesn’t really mean to limit the rule to people who do their own hosting, and who compose everything solely on computers that they themselves own. And perhaps in context the final proposed rule will make that clear. But as written, this particular paragraph offers little cause for rejoicing.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: RedState has the full text online.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE VIRGINIA LAW REVIEW for making its content available online for free.

ANOTHER FAKE MEMO IN THE NEWS? Power Line is hot on the trail.

HERE’S MORE FROM KYRGYZSTAN, where the government’s position appears to be weakening.

UPDATE: A tipping point?

JOHN EDWARDS is podcasting.

MORE BREDESEN ENTHUSIASM, via the WSJ’s Political Diary:

Howard Dean said the way back to power lies in appealing to voters with confederate flags on their pick-up trucks. He’s dropped the imagery but kept the message, showing up in Nashville this week to shine a spotlight on a successful southern Democrat, Tennessee’s Gov. Phil Bredesen. “My idea is to get this state a lot more purple than it is right now,” he told students at Vanderbilt.

They’re pessimistic about his chances.

UPDATE: More analysis of Dean’s speech, here. And also here, from Roger Simon.

ANOTHER BAD WEEK for Michael Moore’s “Minutemen.”

EUGENE VOLOKH AND GEOFFREY STONE debate free speech.

UNSCAM UPDATE:

Kojo Annan, son of Kofi Annan, United Nations secretary-general, received at least $300,000 from Cotecna, a Swiss inspection company awarded a contract ultimately worth about $60m under the Iraqi oil-for-food contract.

The amount was almost double the sum previously disclosed, but payments were arranged in ways that obscured where the money came from or whom it went to.

It’s as if they knew they were doing something wrong. . . .

ROGER SIMON is looking at the numbers.

THE SUMMER OF THE SHARK: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

INTERESTING GRAPHIC on blogosphere traffic spikes, from Boing-Boing.

IN THE MAIL: A copy of Ramez Naam’s new book, More Than Human: Embracing the Promise of Biological Enhancement. I’m not crazy about the cover illustration, but the book looks quite interesting.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg has a review.

IS VENEZUELA HEADING FOR DEFAULT? Miguel Octavio has some news, and there are more thoughts here at The American Thinker.

Can we expect Jack Kemp to defend him?

MORE ASTROTURF: Professional protesters.

WELL, IT’S A new twist on the old “hair in my soup” line. I don’t know how I missed this before.

UPDATE: Reader Steve Nieters emails: “Your daughter will likely love it. Funny for adults too, but our boys howled when reading it at her age.”

BLOGGING: “Like weightlifting for bloviators!”

Related thoughts here.

ASTROTURFING CAMPAIGN FINANCE “REFORM:” Jon Henke notes that Nick Confessore was involved. Heh.

EUROPE, CHINA AND NORTH KOREA: TigerHawk thinks that Condi has cut a deal.

ASTROTURFING CAMPAIGN FINANCE “REFORM:”

According to a recent report by the nonpartisan Political Money Line, Campaign Finance Lobby: 1994-2004, Pew spent an average of $4 million a year over 10 years promoting reform. Seven other foundations — including the Carnegie Corp. ($14 million), the Joyce Foundation ($13.5 million), George Soros’ Open Society Institute ($12.6 million) — cumulatively ponied up another $83 million over 10 years for the same purpose. In his March 2004 lecture at USC, curiously titled “Covering Philanthropy and Nonprofits Beyond 9/11,” a tape of which was recently uncovered by Ryan Sager of the New York Post, Mr. Treglia explained how he operated. “The strategy was designed not to hide Pew’s involvement,” he said, “but most of Pew’s funding.” To accomplish that goal, “I always encouraged the grantees never to mention Pew,” whose tactics were evidently copied by the others. Sure enough, the American Prospect neglected to mention a $132,000 payment from the Carnegie Corp., which financed the magazine’s special issue, “Checkbook Democracy,” which focused on campaign-finance reform. Meanwhile, NPR, which collected $1.2 million from the liberal foundations, failed to disclose that that money was funding a program called “Money, Power and Influence.”

Watch out. Irony this rich will go right to your thighs.

The article also notes President Bush’s role in breaking a campaign promise by signing this dreadful legislation. (And, as I commented at the Politics Online conference, he betrayed his oath of office, too).

UPDATE: Pew grantee The Center for Public Integrity is defending Pew, though there seems to be a bit of preemptive distancing going on, too.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The CPI’s Bill Allison emails that he didn’t mean to be doing any distancing. Well, you can read it yourself, but it seemed that way to me, especially with the way that CPI (1) Challenged Treglia’s accuracy; and (2) Stressed that it, at least, had always disclosed. Perhaps that’s in the eye of the beholder, but as I say, to me it seemed a bit defensive.

MORE: Reader Andy Freeman emails:

I’m looking forward to The Center for Public Integrity’s investigation of

(1)checkbook journalism, and
(2) the campaign and money behind McCain-Feingold.

I think they have a conflict of interest, there. To be fair, I’m sure that they’re decent people who believe in what they’re doing, and who aren’t doing it just because of the money.

MORE: Ryan Sager has had first-person exposure to Allison.