Irish Trojan in Tennessee

What about Zimbabwe?

By Brendan Loy

TNR's James Kirchick asks an intriguing question: "Will the Candidates Recognize Morgan Tsvangirai as President of Zimbabwe?"

Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, is the legitimately elected president of Zimbabwe. Or at least he should be. He won that country's presidential election (and his party won its parliamentary election) on March 29th, a victory that has been denied to him and his colleagues over the past three months as Robert Mugabe has murdered nearly 100 opposition supporters, tortured many more, and driven thousands from their homes. A week after the election, the Zimbabwean junta announced that Tsvangirai did not win an outright majority, thus forcing a runoff scheduled for this Friday. On Sunday, however, Tsvangirai announced that he was dropping out of the election, stating that "we cannot stand there and watch people being killed for the sake of power."

So here's a question for Senators Obama and McCain. Back in April, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer declared Tsvangirai the winner of the March 29th election, and certified that he won over 50% of the vote. Recognition of him as the duly elected president of Zimbabwe -- with all of the diplomatic measures that would imply, specifically spelled out today in a New York Sun editorial -- should have been forthcoming, yet the State Department has been reluctant to go that far. With Tsvangirai hiding in the Dutch Embassy for fear of his life, will either of you call upon the United States to recognize him as the elected president of Zimbabwe?

Sounds good to me. But wouldn't that constitute "regime change"?

Mismanaging the world

By Brendan Loy

"John McCain and the Republicans will lose if this campaign is about issues. They only mismanaged the economy and mismanaged the hurricane and mismanaged the budget and mismanaged the war and mismanaged the hunt for Osama bin Laden and mismanaged the world." --John Brummett, Arkansas News Bureau. (Hat tip: Ben Smith.)

P.S. Meanwhile, on an unrelated note, the Obama campaign takes some MSM heat for its less than entirely progressive attitude toward the American Muslim community. Money quote from Congressman Keith Ellison (he's the guy who was actually photographed being sworn in with his hand on the Koran), regarding Obama's aggressive denials of those pesky "smears" alleging that he's a Muslim: "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way." More here and here.

Fortune's Favour

By Brendan Loy

The new Great Big Sea album is available on iTunes. Woohoo!

UPDATE: So far, so good; I've listened to tracks 1-4 and 7. "Banks of Newfoundland" is, as I thought it might be, quite dissimilar from (and probably more authentic than!) the Irish Rovers' version; the lyrics are roughly the same, but they're set to a completely different tune. It doesn't have the same hairy-chested, belt-it-out feel as the Rovers' version (or, for that matter, as some other GBS songs like "General Taylor," "Captain Kidd," "The Old Black Rum," etc.), but I still like it, I think. I'll have to listen to it a bunch more times to decide for sure. :)

One song I definitely like is track #3, "England," which contains the lyric that gave rise to the album's title, "Fortune's Favour." It's a very neat little ditty about the first English settlers who came to Newfoundland (or "the New Found Land," as the island was originally known, and as the song initially describes it). "England" has good lyrics, beautiful harmonies, and some nice little nuanced touches in the way the song evolves and the way the boys sing it.

P.S. Appropriately enough -- and, come to think of it, this is probably intentional on Great Big Sea's part -- today is the anniversary of the date in 1497 when John Cabot landed in Newfoundland*, becoming the first European to since the Vikings to reach North America's shores. (Hat tip: My Adversaria.)

*Probably. Various other locations, including Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, claim he landed there rather than in Newfoundland. But it was most likely in Newfoundland, at Cape Bonavista.

Big Brother bans hats in Yorkshire pubs

By Brendan Loy

You can take our lives, but you can never take our silly British hats!!!