Mugabe is busy campaigning here. So interesting this time around is that his usually quiet young wife (40 years younger than him) is also campaigning vigorously. She is almost always on television telling Tsvangirai that he has no place at State House because she is the mother there. People are making fun of her saying she is already missing State House and her numerous shopping trips that she is famed for.

But that is predicting victory.M aybe people are just being too optimistic. Most people hope Tsvangirai wins again but Mugabe is doing all he can to steal it before it is even off the ground. Tsvangirai is not allowed to campaign. People are being abducted, some arrested, some beaten up, others killed and some being forced to attend re-orientation meetings. Every sector has suffered. From students, lawyers, politicians, civic society, little kids....it's so, so sad...........

They are starting re-orientation meetings in my area today and I will start delaying from work to avoid being forced to go. People are forced to make Mugabe slogans as they get into public transport,it's so sad. They are going about un-installing people's satelite dishes and harassing vendors of our papers and those of other private papers...........it's so, so sad.

Yet in all this madness, things are again going up by every minute.O n Saturday, bus fare was $1 billion, on Monday it was $1.5 billion, Tuesday morning it was $2 billion and $3 billion in the evening. Bus operators are being forced to wear Mugabe T-shirts and paint their vehicles with Mugabe images. It's just too heavy to take...........we do not know what God will bring us out of all this. People are saying they will embarrass him on voting day, but with everything that's happening, one can see he is not going to let go easily.

Maybe the media felt the Rockefeller Report was old news. Everyone knows there were no weapons of mass destruction. The Bush Administration got it wrong. So they lied? So what? That's history. Now that we're in Iraq, its how we get out that is important.

Wrong! The Rockefeller Report is not old news. The public statements of Bush, Cheney, Powell, and Rumsfeld in the run up to the war about WMD and Saddam's links to al-Qaeda that the report focuses on display a cognitive pathology that continues to infect in the policy thinking of the Republican leadership. The pathology is disordered thinking that willfully refuses to consider evidence that falsifies a policy position. It resembles the stinking thinking of drug addicts.

You find it in the revival since 9/11 of trillion dollar defense spending on nuclear submarines, stealth air craft, star wars missile defense systems, and the like, in order to wage war against terrorists armed with box cutters and insurgents who strike and then dissolve back into Iraqi neighborhoods. Those spending decisions by the Bush Administration are made with complete disregard for the mountains of evidence that costly weapons systems designed to fight the Soviet Union no longer have utility in the current "war on terror." You find it in the AynRandian/Greenspandian mind set that ignores all evidence that regulation is good for a market economy as Bear Stearns crashes and burns. You find it in the Bush/McCain condemnation of the Supreme Court decision granting habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo prisoners as a threat to national security.

We need to recognize stinking policy thinking wherever it occurs and give it a strong dose of electoral therapy. Signs of this disorder, displayed in the Rockefeller Report, must be diagnosed for the impairment they reflect by citizens of an informed democracy. Unfortunately, the importance of this report was lost on the mainstream media in the weeks since its publication.

Today, through its own investigation, the BBC reported that

"an estimated $23 billion may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

The order applies to 70 court cases against some of the top US companies."

The article goes on to predict that while Bush is in office, we certainly won't see the gag order lifted (after all, his friends are benefiting), which means that these companies will continue reaping in the profits from a situation made worse by their very presence every day.

In the lead up to the presidential election, emphasis has been put on the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq - but what about the defense and development contractors who number just as many?

The "lost" $23 billion could have been put to good use for actual rebuilding instead of lining the pockets of these sick profiteers and then maybe we wouldn't still be talking about how to "get out" of Iraq.

"I wanna Go Home". That was the subject of my youngest brother's email. Days after the violence has died down in South Africa, the impact is now starting to be felt.

My brother had resolved that he would not flee the xenophobic attacks. He said he would stay in South Africa as he felt there was rule of law and the police would protect him.

However, today he finally broke and said he wanted out. Remember my sister left as soon as the attacks, which claimed more than 50 lives, started.

He said while the violence has died down, he no longer has a job, no money and has no place to stay.

South African landlords cashing in on the desperate plight of foreigners were charging high nightly rates.

"We have to pay for a shower too," he says.

He realises that Zimbabwe is not the safest place for young unemployed men, but has nowhere else to run to.

Like a number of Zimbabweans, he thinks the violence in South Africa is a well orchestrated plot to get as many Zimbabweans back to their country to vote.

"The more people who cast their votes, the easier it will be for Bob (Robert Mugabe) to rig the elections," he says.

He reminds me that the South African high commission in Harare was closed for several days before and after the elections. This was done to reduce the number of people travelling outside the country.