Now Here's Some Good News You Just Don't See Every Day...

For once I am pleased to talk about something happening in two political hotbeds, East Asia and Africa.

If you have been following the news about Zimbabwe lately then you will know that the failed governmental policies of that country's dictator Robert Mugabe, who has oppressed his country's hitherto successful White farmers by stealing their land and giving it to ignorant hacks within his political party, the seemingly eternally ruling ZanuPF.

He has also attacked the poor living within urban areas especially in the area of the capital Harare, even destroying the homes of thousands upon thousands of poor Zimbabweans in the name of "cleaning up the waste".

And to top it all off his country suffer under a 1200 percent inflation rate.

And all that BEFORE we even reach his regime's laundry list of human rights violations.

But an unlikely goodwill gesture has drawn the attention of the international media: Some of that country's children are about to receive some 200 000 pieces of candy thanks to Taiwanese schoolboy Lin HungChun, a sixth-grader at the Ping Ho Primary School in the central community of Changhwa.

It is stunning to be forthright that an 11-or-12-year-old boy could have so much concern for starving Africans that he wanted to gather such a massive number of chocolates. He got the idea for this plan after seeing photos of such thin children.

And though many millions of African children need more substantial food aid than chocolates and other candies, certainly this is the case in Zimbabwe, Lin's gesture is beyond welcome.

As we become more self-absorbed in ourselves and in our lives, as we fret over making bill payments, sweating the mobile phone bill here, the car insurance there, internet service this, electric bill that, natural gas bill here, $3 a gallon petrol there, Lin just brought a sense of reality into our overbuilt sense of reality: He is telling us, Think about those who don't have any of those things.

It is maddening to think that an 11-year-old, 12-year-old boy in central Free China, in the heart of Taiwan, Republic Of China, the dominion of the TRUE government of the Chinese people, should have to remind us of, as in the words of commentator Cal Thomas, the things that matter most.

And this is clearly one of those things: Chung ChingFang has EVERY reason to be proud of her son Lin. After all, he DID undertake an effort to help poor schoolmates who could not afford to buy lunch. That was the start of a long road that Lin plans to follow to become a humanitarian.

He could well wind up the Larry Jones of East Asia. Wonder what the Feed The Children cofounder would say to this. I bet he jumps in with some food aid for Zimbabwe. Problem is we have a risk that Mugabe's ZanuPF party hacks might hijack such aid given freely in good faith by the people of Taiwan, the USA, Canada, or any other country.

If the world media do not not Lin HungChun as their young hero of the day it's a damn shame.