New York city councilman CHARLES BARRON struck a low note for a city that has historically played host to victims of oppressive governments on September 12 of last year when he feted Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe on the steps of City Hall. When Mugabe—whose campaign of murder, mass rape, and imprisonment of black political foes and white farmers has sent a tide of refugees spilling across the border into South Africa, and who voted himself a 600 percent pay raise as his subjects teeter near famine—marched up the stairs, you could almost hear the bones of his victims crunching under Barron's feet.