The seizure of private farm lands in Zimbabwe is a primary contributor to widespread starvation in Africa, according to this Washington Post article. It takes him ten paragraphs to figure it out, of course, but the reporter notes that food production in Zimbabwe, one of southern Africa's few food exporters, has dropped 40% after dictator (not "President," as the reporter labels him) Robert Mugabe violently redistributed land last year. Predictably, he also blames the weather, which by now should be a bad joke, given how often socialist states -- and journalists -- drag it out as their excuse for hunger. Isn't it interesting that droughts and high-rain seasons only seem to produce starvation in socialist states, but never in market-based countries with weather of similar variability?

The reporter also blames widespread graft in Malawi, which doesn't explain why this fertile region can't grow food, it simply explains why a stopgap measure to prevent starvation -- foreign aid -- hasn't worked. Finally, he inexplicably blames high food prices, as if there were tons of food sitting in stores, the only thing keeping hungry Africans from them being no Food Stamp program. Had he taken an economics class, he might have learned that prices tend to rise when a resource is scarce. In short, high prices are a symptom of the food shortage, not a cause.

But at least the reporter is somewhere in the neighborhood of right. I haven't checked out The New York Times' spin yet, but I'll bet this is all somehow the fault of the Bush Administration's close ties to Enron.