In the category of stories that rumble away in the background of the news while rarely making it to our front pages, let us not forget the ongoing immiseration of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

In the category of stories that rumble away in the background of the news while rarely making it to our front pages, let us not forget the ongoing immiseration of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. There is indeed, as Adam Smith remarked, a great deal of ruin in a nation; but there is not so much that an ingenious leader bent on ruination cannot, even in the absence of such horrors as civil war or invasion, turn an orderly and prosperous country into a hellhole of violence and beggary. That has been Robert Mugabe's achievement. He is the first nation-wrecker of the 21st century. There is no real news from Zimbabwe other than its continuing descent into darkness. The nation's inflation rate for May 2006 was reported as 1,193 percent, up 150 percent from April's. Zimbabwe now prints $100,000 bills, one of which will get you a loaf of bread, supposing you can find a vendor. That Mugabe is still received in foreign capitals--he is to present a paper on "land reclamation" in Accra, Ghana, in coming days--is an international scandal. Shall we be hearing condemnations of Mugabe from the U.N.'s spiffy new Human Rights Council? Don't bet on it.