Editor's Note: For the past five weeks we have received Upfront via email from Mick McMenaminuses. This week we received none. Suspecting another belligerent weekend as the reason, we went searching for our itinerate columnist – only to discover that Mick McMenaminuses is missing… His reporter's notebook was the only thing found, bristling in the breeze along Greenwood. Here are the stories he had compiled.
Africa Is Saved!
After a tainted election comparable to the 2000 runoff that allowed the Supreme Court to name George W. Bush president, Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai have at last signed a deal to end the political crisis. Faced with inflation of over one million percent - by far the highest in the world - Zimbabwe under Mugabe has issues akin to Bend under its current city council. Tsvangirai was forced to find safety in the Dutch Embassy as his followers were arrested and murdered, and the new power-sharing deal (Mugabe at least agreeing to talk about sharing power, that is) intends "to chart a new way of political interaction." Upon signing the deal, AIDS was suddenly cured, Cecil Rhodes reincarnated and returned all of the treasure he stole from the continent, and white suburban kids decided to shave their dreads.
