Thousands held in Zimbabwe blitz (BBC News)

[Anarcho-Socialist]

More than 22,000 people have been arrested in the recent crackdown on Zimbabwe's shantytowns, a police spokesman has told state media.
He said some of those made homeless when their shacks were demolished in the capital, Harare, were being sent back to their rural homes.

Residents and riot police clashed overnight in the second city, Bulawayo. Meanwhile, the head of the World Food Programme has discussed Zimbabwe's food needs with President Robert Mugabe.

Millions of people are suffering from food shortages and Mr Mugabe told James Morris he would "welcome" food aid, Mr Morris said. Last year, Mr Mugabe asked the WFP to scale down its operations, saying Zimbabweans had so much food, "they were choking".

Mr Mugabe's critics say the shortages have been caused by his seizure of white-owned land. He denies this, blaming the weather and a Western plot to remove him from power.

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4598645.stm

[David__77]

1. All the white-held land should be seized.

They can provide minimal compensation for smaller landholders, but whites in Zimbabwe must accept that they must live under Black leadership and must submit to it. That's the only historical redress to evil British colonialism, and Tony Blair can go to hell.

[geek tragedy]

3. I assume that the millions who are going to starve there can also go to

hell.

And when is race *ever* a legitimate criteria for governmental action? I can see the need to take over the very large farms, but the "stick it to Whitey" program has a logical end in genocide.

Nationalization programs can work (Cuba, Venezuela) but they are full bore disasters in the hands of corrupt thugs like Mugabe.

[David__77]

4. It's about nation, not race.

The Black people in Zimbabwe are Zimbabweans, the whites are settler colonialists from England, mainly, and should not be afforded the same rights as Zimbabweans. That may seem harsh, but they should not get away with sitting with privileges paid for in African blood.

Mugabe isn't great, but he's better than some Western flunkey like you see in, say, Uganda or some other countries. It is correct to expropriate the land and give it to Zimbabwean farmers. And it is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees, so a little hunger is an acceptable price for national freedom.

[The Magistrate]

6. Indeed, Sir

A little hunger by other people is an easy price to bear....

[David__77]

7. That is for the people of Zimbabwe to decide, not me.

My job is to oppose US invasion and subversion of the countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, that have suffered for so long under colonialism and then imperialism.

[geek tragedy]

10. You show great courage in the face of other people's suffering.

"We had to starve them to death to save them from imperialism."

Oh, how we become what we despise.

[fujiyama]

151. That's kind of like

"We had to bomb them to liberate them".

What twisted reasoning.

[Chicago Democrat]

11. I'm glad your position is going nowhere and the present crisis

will likely see the end of Mugabe one way or another.

[David__77]

16. I wouldn't at all mind seeing Mugabe go.

He's a reactionary on many levels, he's a patriarchal bigot and he's suppressed the mass movements in many places. I don't confuse his spewings for genuine revolutionary movement. The best hope is for a new opposition to arise, committed both to the protection of civil rights and to national development based on redressing past wrongs, free from dependency on the World Bank, IMF or their former colonial masters in London.

[Chicago Democrat]

26. At least you realise Mugabe is the problem.

What's wrong with a constitutional democracy ala South Afrika? You don't see mass expulsions and confiscations for the benefit of ANC big wigs at the expence of "white only"?


Zimbabwe is a outlaw, rougue regime because they used non-legal means to seize properties of people that are one or two generations removed and completely INNOCENT of any colonial era percieved wrongs. If you have cases from the past BRING THEM TO COURT. It is not justice to simply seize land. The government could have done it right, BUT THEY DIDN'T. That land should be reclaimed or paid for or properly adjudicated. You can't expect anything but starvation and lawlessness if you have a CRONY LED MUGABE FUCKED UP government. Get rid of HIM and them and then maybe the world will give a fuck that the stupid Mugabe government's stupid, unjust and non-democratic non-lawful ways totally ruined a beautiful, bountiful, used-to-be-the-most productive land in Afrika.

[David__77]

34. A couple points...

First, productivity isn't always the end-all be-all criterion. Sometimes it's worth it to temporarily lower productivity to correct a problem in productive relations--in this case, land ownership problems. Second, I agree that it would be preferable where possible to utilize a legal and transparent mechanism. I think that recent actions in Venezuela provide a good example: the people passed land reform at the ballot box, summons were served, and the political mobilization did not cause bodily harm to anyone.

[Chicago Democrat]

52. Hey I totally support Hugo Chavez...

For example he recently confiscated some land from some absentee landowners (like 8% of Venezuela). That was done 'legally', even though it was a total confiscation with no compensation even. But in that case it was ONE OWNER. You know that in Zibabwe, tens of thousand of medium sized farms (like 1000 acres) we just taken and ruined! So what do you know? Now they have starvation and all this trouble.

Now the world is saying a collective FU to Mr Mugabe who is still lying saying they have "so much food they choke on it". Mugabe is simply reaping the whirlwind his people stirred up. Too bad its the people that have to suffer the most.

[DulceDecorum]

72. If the people of Zimbabwe really wanted Mugabe out

then they would act.
these are the same people who kicked out the foreign invaders not too long ago. They still know how to rid themselves of a government they do not want.

Look at Iraq.
When Saddam was there he could walk freely among his people.
http://www.rediff.com/us/2003/apr/04iraq6.htm
The current liberators dare not remove their Kevlar flak jackets even while relieving their bladders and bowels.

This is not exactly gunboat diplomacy, but who really needs gunboats when you have 140,000 armed troops backed up by attack helicopters, thousands of tanks and armored vehicles, the world's most powerful air force on call, and, yes, plenty of gunboats too, floating in the nearby Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf.
http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050517-021804-7934r.htm

[DulceDecorum]

47. The whites used non-legal means to seize properties of people

who owned the land in the first place.
The decendants of these people qualify under law as fences
in that they have KNOWINLG recived STOLEN property
and used it to their advantage.
That land does does not now,
and has NEVER
belonged to the white invaders of Zimbabwe.
And if they were forced to return their ill-gotten gains,
GOOD.
And tough titty.

If the whites have a problem with FACT that the land actually belongs to Zimbabwe,
may I suggest they take up the matter with the International Court in the Hague.
And then the Africans can counter be dredging up the Geographical Conference in Brussels, 12 September 1876.

[Chicago Democrat]

66. Possibly true.. Not in all cases though...

Land records are the best detailed records of all. If land was 'stolen' in the past, you should have to prove it in a real court. Who stole from whom? when? I doubt anything was stolen at all. What if it was 'bought'. Will you then challenge the price? What about the title of the person who you bought it from. Its a tangled morrass of rights and law, and its exactly the type of thing that DIDNT HAPPEN in Zimbabwe.

I'm all for a legal just solution, within reason!! Noone who was at that 1876 conference is alive today,nor are their sons, maybe their grandsons are pooping in their diapers. So that justifies wholesale mass explusions how? There are things called statutes of limitations as well.

How far back are we supposed to undo historic wrongs? \

Where do you live? How do you know that some Native America really doesnt have the right to throw you off?!


Thanks for the spirited debate. Love to all Democrats.

[DulceDecorum]

77. Whose records shall we use? The thieves?

or those of the people of Zimbabwe to whom the land of Zimbabwe rightfully belongs.

You ask how far back we should go to right historical wrongs.
I am willing to try Cain for the murder of Abel.
Damn fool started this whole mess.

When all is said and done
the fact remains that those white farmers STOLE that land.
And now they are whining like whipped curs
because they are being forced to return what does not belong to them.


"I don't think they like what he said, because he not only predicted that thousands of blacks in Africa would die of hunger or a terrible sickness – perhaps, sadly, AIDS or Ebola – but also that one day the Afrikaner will take back his land and freedom," he said.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=27588

These people will not be happy until the whole of Africa is one big plantation state with them as S&M masters.

[DulceDecorum]

30. With all the hunger in the US

why are some here so "compassionate' about the people of Zimbabwe?

Ever since GOLD PLATINUM and DIAMONDS were discovered in Zimbabwe, the US/UK has been very very interested in maintaining a stranglehold on that nation.
Indigenous people be damned.

[geek tragedy]

12. You are still using a purely racist approach to internal politics.

If someone is born in Zimbabwe and has spent their entire life in Zimbabwe, they are Zimbabwean, regardless of the color of their skin.

Would you suggest that white folks forcibly repatriate all African-Americans in the US? And that black folks should just learn to submit to the authority of white folks?

[DulceDecorum]

18. Many of the ancestors of African Americans

were FORCIBLY brought into the US.
The Constitution of the US was interpreted by Justice Tanner as saying that they can NEVER be full citizens and Dred Scott v. Sandford has YET to be overturned or superseded by the Supreme Court of the United States.

After the Civil War rendered these persons free, they were promised reparations in the form of forty acres and a mule.
WHERE THE FUCK are these reparations?

Two days after these reparations are given
Zimbabwe should convene a committee to look into reparations for the murderous scum that got kicked out for trying to trying that part of Africa into a plantation state.

[David__77]

20. I disagree with your premises.

"If someone is born in Zimbabwe and has spent their entire life in Zimbabwe, they are Zimbabwean, regardless of the color of their skin."

I diagree with that statement. That is a justification for settler colonialism. If the Germans had held the Ukraine for 80 years instead of 2 years, the Germans born there would not be "Ukrainians," they would be Germans and, if the Ukrainians got their freedom, they should not necessarily treat the settlers and their children, and grandchildren, as "Ukrainians." There must be a mechanism to redress past wrongs.

The analogy for Black people is also off. White people are the settler colonialists in the US, Blacks were forcibly brought here, and if anyone is to "submitted to," it's the indigenous people of North America, not white people. And indeed, there should be reparations to indigenous people on a much higher level, and there should be FULL sovereignty to lands promised the Indians by national treaties. Black, when appropriate, people deserve reparations for slavery AND for the denial of civil rights of citizenship that were endemic until the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.

[geek tragedy]

45. That's just crap. Ethnicity, race, and nationality are not the same thing

It's like saying that Jews weren't "real" Germans or Poles or Russians. Even if they had never lived anywhere else, and their parents had lived nowhere else, and so on and so forth.

[anotherdrew]

48. no it itsn't like saying that

Jews didn't march in and take over germany or anywhere else, they came peacefully. Not so colonialists. Whats so hard to understand for you about this? Just because they held on for two generations makes their children get away scott free with their grandparents crimes?

So you are saying if: my grandfather comes to your grandfathers house (when they are our age), kills him and moves in, calling your grandfathers old home his, by the time you and I are around you must permit me to live in your grandfathers house? I doubt very much you would feel that way. I think you'd want it back.

[geek tragedy]

55. Nobody is debating the wisdom of land reform.

I'm talking about the racism and proto-genocidalism being advocated.

The themes of not being a "real" citizen of the state, of being an outside parasite, etc etc are themes used against unpopular, economically privileged minorities that precede eliminationism.

[Name removed]

73. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

74. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DulceDecorum]

123. A person with illegal dual citizenship

who choses not to live in one nation
and actively assists the second in the destabilzation of the first nation
is worth of nothing other than contempt.

In many countries, if you are neither seen nor heard from for a period of over seven years, you can then be declared legally dead.
Many of those white settlers wilfully, and legally, qualify as dead.

[anotherdrew]

46. no white should leave too

submit to the will of the natives if anything

[geek tragedy]

57. Should whites be allowed to vote? Should they have full citizen

rights, including the right to organize politically?

[DulceDecorum]

61. Lets ask the African Americans in Florida and Ohio

that question.
I am sure they have some valuable insights.

As we begin the second Bush administration, let's take a moment to reflect upon one of the most historic episodes of the 2000 battle for the White House -- the now-legendary "Brooks Brothers Riot" at the Miami-Dade County polling headquarters.
This was when dozens of "local protesters," actually mostly Republican House aides from Washington, chanted "Stop the fraud!" and "Let us in!" when the local election board tried to move the re-counting from an open conference room to a smaller space.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31074-2005Jan23.html

[The Magistrate]

63. And This, Sir, Bears What Relevance To Current Events In Zimbabwe?

[DulceDecorum]

67. I can only wish that I could reply to that.

[The Magistrate]

71. Of Course You Can Reply, Sir

You will note elsewhere here it is perfectly safe....

[DulceDecorum]

78. Consider this to then be

a reply.

[anotherdrew]

70. LOL - let's just "go slow"

don't want to rush into anything... Anyway, everyone has the right to organize politically, it can't truely be taken away... just in some places be ready to defend themselves from the military/police when they come 'round to exercise their right to bust in heads. Much of the world is still governed by force.

[noonwitch]

25. The white people are as british as white americans

They've been in Zimbabwe for generations. There does need to be some type of land ownership reform, but Mugabe's way has been murderous and brutal. There needs to be a way to empower the black citizens without totally disenfranchising the whites.

Mugabe has been in power too long, and has become an entrenched thug. He censors the media, has used international aid for his own benefit and not that of the poor it was intended for. His election frauds make Bush's actions in 2000 look like an innocent mistake by comparison. Mugabe is a brutal communist dicatator and making excuses for him does no good for his nation.

[David__77]

37. White Americans, some of them, are pretty British actually.

Others are German, Irish and so on. In the US, whites wiped out the indigenous population in the main, but still there should be further actions taken to allow for autonomy and national rights for those peoples. So I don't disagree to some extent. But bear in mind also that there are stonger links between whites in Zimbabwe and Britain, than in the US like you're talking about. Many of them have dual citizenship and so on.

[DulceDecorum]

79. Thousands of British citizens claim to be from Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe outlawed dual citizenship in 1984 and dual citizens had up to the end of 1985 to renounce foreign citizenship. Those who failed to do so became mere residents with the right to work and own property but without the right to vote.

Many of those Brits don't even live in Zimbabwe.
But yet and still they are trying to destroy this African nation.

The official Ziana news agency also said the government was cutting to five years from seven the time in which a citizen could stay out of the country "without lawful excuse" before losing Zimbabwean citizenship. It quoted a government spokesman as saying President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party - which faces an unprecedented challenge sparked by a severe economic crisis - had been forced to tighten the rules to sideline opponents hiding under dual citizenship.
"There are concerns that those with dual citizenship are behind efforts to discredit the government to use diplomatic and other means to topple the Zanu-PF. "Lines of credit, aid and other forms of assistance have been systematically stopped over the last couple of years to pressure the government," added the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper.
Government officials estimate that up to 20,000 whites with Zimbabwean passports also hold British passports or can claim British citizenship. Whites make up less than one percent of Zimbabwe's 12,5 million people, but are currently under pressure from the government, which accuses them of bankrolling the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).
http://www.globalpolicy.org/nations/citizen/zimbabwe.htm

[Igel]

76. Woo-hoo!

Such a specious excuse for blatant racism and race-baiting.

Blacks have the rights, but it's not about race.

African blood paid for their independence, so the benefits are distributed and inherited based on "blood", regardless as to whether individuals or their ancestors actually participated. Would a Zimbabwean in South Africa have any rights, or an Angolan in Zimbabwe?

If it's about race, the answer is, Yes. If it's not, the answer is that it would be an injustice to not confiscate their possessions and treat them as chattel.

But can't similar arguments be made about Asians and Arabs in Africa? Mexicans in the US? N. Africans in France, and the Chinese in Canada? Even the Turks in Turkey--the Kurds predated both Arabs and Turks by a millennium or more, and should be helping them to confiscating the land usurped by the Arabs and Turks, unless I misconstrue your logic.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

87. Maybe the U.S. should give upstate NY back to the Iroquois then?

[DulceDecorum]

92. The Iroquois would probably go for that

Thank you.

[BadNews]

160. True but....

They may agree, but that doesn't make it the right thing to do.

[DulceDecorum]

8. I have two words for you: Project Coast.

Those whites who you are so eager to to protect
spent YEARS trying to perfect a biological weapon
that would rid this planet of black people.

And you support them -- WHY?

[Name removed]

14. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DulceDecorum]

22. Is that a personal attack?

[Merope215]

99. Uh...what?

Would you be so kind as to provide a link or two to support that claim?

[DulceDecorum]

145. "a dedicated and committed medical practitioner"

Issue of 2002-04-22
Much of the testimony had been astonishing. The prosecution had called a hundred and fifty-three witnesses, including smugglers, death-squad operatives, and a number of scientists who worked on Project Coast, as the top-secret program was known. They described research into a race-specific bacterial weapon; large-scale production of dangerous drugs; the fatal poisoning of anti-apartheid leaders, captured guerrillas, and suspected security risks; plans to spread cholera through the water supply; a plot to poison Nelson Mandela in his cell; and even a project to find ways to sterilize the country's black population. Macabre biological and toxic weapons came to light: chocolate spiked with anthrax or botulinum; cigarettes spiked with anthrax; beer spiked with thallium and botulinum; deodorant infected with paratyphoid; anthrax spores sprinkled on the gum of envelope flaps. The defense produced only one witness: Basson, who spent nine weeks on the stand and denied involvement in anything illegal.

In his testimony, Basson had regaled the court with tales of his exploits as soldier, scientist, physician, spy, biowarrior, and sanctions-buster for the old white-minority regime. He told yarn after yarn about his adventures in far corners of the globe in pursuit of allies, ingredients, and information for his secret weapons program. His terrible stint in a Swiss jail was even worse, he assured the judge, than his stay in a Libyan jail. When it came to the more brutal aspects of his work as a soldier—to incidents that could not be denied—Basson's explanation was timeless: he was only following orders. "I am a dedicated and committed medical practitioner and very proud to have served my country during what was a war," Basson declared. Judge Hartzenberg, a fellow-Afrikaner who has been on the South African bench for nearly two decades, believed him.
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/online/020422on_onlineonly03

Downes v. Bidwell
182 U.S. 244
May 27, 1901
There are certain principles of natural justice inherent in the Anglo-Saxon character, which need no expression in constitutions or statutes to give them effect or to secure dependencies against legislation manifestly hostile to their real interests." 182 U.S. 244 at 269

[NickB79]

150. So every white man, woman and child in Zimbabwe was involved in this?

That's a pretty impressive claim to make. If it weren't every white Zimbabwean, what percentage do you think were involved in Project Coast?

By the same token, do you consider every white person in the US to be a member of the KKK because a fraction of a percent of whites in the US are KKK members?

[DulceDecorum]

156. Since every single black Zimbabwean male

is allegedly involved in rape,
and even the young boys are in "rape school"
I think that we may conclude that everything and everyone that has ever had any type of contact with that nation, is tainted.

Perhaps the proponents of Project Coast were "justified" in trying to rid the world of these sex-fiends.
And their supporters.
Hence your distinct lack of sympathy for the targets of this genocide.

Furthermore:
The first quote came directly from the New Yorker.
The second quote came directly from the Supreme Court of the United States.
I added NOTHING.
I suggest that that you contact either or both of those institutions if you have objections to what they have themselves published.
Thank you.

[NickB79]

159. You failed to answer my question

Why do you seem to imply that every white Zimbabwean citizen was involved with Project Coast (a South African apartheid program, not a Zimbabwean program, BTW)? Were all white Zimbabweans involved to justify a collective punishment?

I have plenty of sypathy for the targets of the South African genocide attempts outlined in Project Coast. However, what does that have to do with the white citizens of Zimbabwe?

I never implied you added anything, so I don't know where that remark came from.

[Chicago Democrat]

2. Mugabe is a murderous homophobic racist swine and should be

overthrown BY ANY MEANS WHATSOEVER.

[David__77]

5. Are you trumpeting Western invasion?

Wow, you support US invasion of Nepal, and now Zimbabwe too? Is there any country that should be allowed to be free from US bombs and missiles?

[Chicago Democrat]

9. Your advocacy of forcible dispossesion of "white owned" land

which is the primary cause of the present starvation is utterly unsupportable collective punishment which illegal under international norms and does not do one single thing to redress historic wrongs. No you merely advocate new atrocities, creating whole new generations of wrongs and whole new generations of oppressors and oppressed.

[DulceDecorum]

13. The Brown Man's Burden

Pile on the brown man's burden
To gratify your greed;
Go, clear away the "niggers"
Who progress would impede;
Be very stern, for truly
'Tis useless to be mild
With new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.

Pile on the brown man's burden;
And, if ye rouse his hate,
Meet his old-fashioned reasons
With Maxims up to date.
With shells and dumdum bullets
A hundred times made plain
The brown man's loss must ever
Imply the white man's gain.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
compel him to be free;
Let all your manifestoes
Reek with philanthropy.
And if with heathen folly
He dares your will dispute,
Then, in the name of freedom,
Don't hesitate to shoot.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And if his cry be sore,
That surely need not irk you--
Ye've driven slaves before.
Seize on his ports and pastures,
The fields his people tread;
Go make from them your living,
And mark them with his dead.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
Nor do not deem it hard
If you should earn the rancor
Of those ye yearn to guard.
The screaming of your Eagle
Will drown the victim's sob--
Go on through fire and slaughter.
There's dollars in the job.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
And through the world proclaim
That ye are Freedom's agent--
There's no more paying game!
And, should your own past history
Straight in your teeth be thrown,
Retort that independence
Is good for whites alone.

Pile on the brown man's burden,
With equity have done;
Weak, antiquated scruples
Their squeamish course have run,
And, though 'tis freedom's banner
You're waving in the van,
Reserve for home consumption
The sacred "rights of man"!

And if by chance ye falter,
Or lag along the course,
If, as the blood flows freely,
Ye feel some slight remorse,
Hie ye to Rudyard Kipling,
Imperialism's prop,
And bid him, for your comfort,
Turn on his jingo stop.
--Henry Labouchère

[Chicago Democrat]

17. Knowing ignorance is strength

Knowing ignorance is strength.
Ignoring knowledge is sickness.

If one is sick of sickness, then one is not sick.
The sage is not sick because he is sick of sickness.
Therefore he is not sick.

[DulceDecorum]

21. Zimbabwe is constantly under attack from the US/UK

and most especially after Mugabe blew that Equatorial Guinea coup attempt out of the water.
Yup, old Maggie Thatcher, mother of Mark,
and Jonathan Bush, unka to Dubya,
are still reeling from that one.
Doug Feith mercenary paymaster, resigned.

Africans can govern themselves and they can also feed themselves.
Those white "farmers" can return whence they came secure in the knowledge that no-one in Africa really wants or needs them.

[Chicago Democrat]

32. Tell me where to send a check and I'll support the Devil himself

to end Mugabe's regime.



DOWN WITH THE MURDEROUS SWINE MUGABE!

[anotherdrew]

51. up with Mugabe

go get him yourself if you're so damn sure

[DulceDecorum]

59. I second that.

:yourock:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

83. Up with Mugabe? Even his child rape camps?

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/22/1047749994019.html?oneclick=true

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,916191,00.html

http://www.samara.co.zw/infoline/aug02/26_aug.htm

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/panorama.1487.html

[Name removed]

91. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Magistrate]

93. In Other Words, Sir

Any account of rape on the continent of Africa is a concoction, sourced to whites, designed to disparrage African men? No account by an African woman on the subject is to be believed; indeed, we are to believe that African men are different from all other men, in that when in the midst of war and political persecutions they conduct themselves in a wholly asexual manner, and never take advantage of or abuse power over designated victims of the other side?

[DulceDecorum]

97. I am chomping at the bit

but I cannot reply to you
other than to state that I cannot reply.

[The Magistrate]

103. It Seems To Me, Mr. Decorum

That actual case is that there is no reply that can be made, besides an acknowledgement that the view you are presenting here is without foundation.

There is no ground whatever for pretending that accounts women give of being raped are lies or hoaxes, simply because the facts they relate are inconvenient to some cherished polititcal view.

[Name removed]

105. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

110. Of course you can

moderators have to hold back in their criticism of others - they have to be scrupulously fair (as The Magistrate is being). There's nothing special stopping you speaking your mind - the normal DU rules apply.

[Name removed]

111. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[AngryAmish]

116. Gotten over the vapors, yet?

[DulceDecorum]

117. How is that possible?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

94. Your notion that African women and Hilary Andersson are conspiring

doesn't stack-up. Women are plucking up the astounding courage to speak out against being raped and beaten-up; the last thing they need is someone telling them they're "making it up" with the help of a BBC journalist.

Type in "Zimbabwe" and "rape camps" into Google and you'll find many accounts of abuse at the hands of Mugabe's henchman.

Your attempt to portray this and the false testimony of the Kuwati ambassador's daughter telling "babies being ripped out of incuabtors" by Iraqis as one and the same is grossly disingenious.

If Hilary Andersson offends you (and I see no evidence of her being a racist) then you can easily find reports from other journalists.

-------------

Mother forced to sing tyrant's praises as his men raped daughter
By Christina Lamb in Harare
September 1 2002
The Sun-Herald

"The game we are about to play needs music," the Zimbabwean police constable said to the 12-year-old girl. But as he tossed a mattress on to the ground it was clear that it was no game he was planning.

For the next four hours the girl's mother and younger sisters, aged nine and seven, were forced to chant praises to President Robert Mugabe and watch Dora being gang-raped by five "war veterans" and the policeman.

"Every time they stopped singing, the policeman and war vets beat them with sjamboks and sticks," said Dora, crying and clenching her hands repeatedly as she recalled the ordeal that took place behind her family hut in a village in the dark shadow of the Vumba mountains of Manicaland, in eastern Zimbabwe. "They kept thrusting themselves into me over and over again saying: 'This is the punishment for those of you who want to sell this country to Tony Blair and the whites.' When they had finished, it hurt so much I couldn't walk."

Now in hiding, spending most of her nights in frightened wakefulness, she remembers feeling the rough breath on her face, the hands forcing apart her thighs, and "that animal thing" as she calls it slamming into her underfed body. Dora was raped because her father is a supporter of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. He is not a candidate, not a party official, just a simple carpenter who had mistakenly believed that he lived in a country where he could vote for whom he liked.

More at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/08/31/1030508143144.html?oneclick=true

[DulceDecorum]

96. Fiction writer Christina Lamb? The Occupational Tourist?

He stole my soul
April 24, 2005
Coelho responded with a statement that it was none of them. His muse, he said, was a British war correspondent from The Sunday Times who had inspired him with her “courage and sensitivity”.
I was in Zimbabwe pretending to be a tourist (it is the only way we can report on the country) when a journalist from the Portuguese daily Correio da Manha called me to say they had discovered I was Esther. There followed the most bizarre interview, as I continued to pretend on the phone that I was not a journalist in case any of Mugabe’s spies was listening.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-1582319,00.html

Yeah, a regular Barbara Cartland.

It was the moment all war correspondents secretly dread. I was driving down a muddy track with four colleagues, one British, two Norwegian and a Swede, when a shot rang out. Four men in army fatigues and balaclavas jumped out and drunkenly blocked our way, pointing sub-machine guns at the car and forcing us out. "F***ing Americans!" they shouted as they threw us to the ground, then stripped us of our wallets and watches. When one of my colleagues protested, they kicked him to the side and shot him.
All part of the normal hazards of reporting a war, you might think -- except that this ambush happened in south Wales. The gun-waving guerrillas were local youth from a drama school in Hereford and our editors were paying (pounds sterling) 1,800 a head for us to spend a week in the hands of former SAS commandos, to be trained in surviving "hostile environments".
"One dead, one raped, three shitting themselves," barked the man from the SAS. "You didn't handle that very well, did you?" We shook our heads shamefacedly. Lotta from Sweden was in charge of education at her newspaper, Dan the documentary-maker was only a few years out of university, and the Norwegians were usually based in Oslo. But in my 16th year on the road as a foreign correspondent, I had no such excuse.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4622_132/ai_97482613

And if you happen to enjoy that sort of stuff,
here, knock yourself out.
http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Christina+Lamb%22
Serious journalist, my foot.

[Name removed]

98. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[The Magistrate]

102. You Will Find, Mr. Decorum

Damned few men, from any place, asked point blank to their face what they think of rape, who will venture to say they approve the practice and give it a hearty endorsement. And yet, somehow, the thing occurs routinely, throughout the world, and is particularly prevalent in war and wide-spread persecutions and imprisonments. Why you should imagine Africa is any different is beyond me; my own view is that people are pretty much people where-ever they may be, and contain and express the full range of human behaviors, for better or worse.

What is particularly troubling here is your repeated statements that the accounts women give of being raped are to be dismissed as fabrications and hoaxes, particularly as the leading reason you seem to offer in proof is a statement that the men they accuse could not possibly have behaved in such a way. Rape has been swept under the rug on that account more times than can possibly be counted....

[Name removed]

106. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DulceDecorum]

118. I really cannot answer that one now

can I?

[anotherdrew]

124. what he may be trying to say...

Is that the president of the country simply can't prevent rapes occuring. I'm sure it's against the rules for these soldiers to be doing these and many other acts, but the prisdent of the nation can't force his troops to behave as they should. The military officers should be asked why they are permitting this to go on. This is an issue of lack of professionalism in that nations armed forces and a sign of lawlessness.

It's an unfair leap to say though that these rapes are state policy, maybe they are, but equally likely it's just young soldiers drunk on power with no one able to hold them to account.

[Vladimir]

126. I would hope that this is not the point

If I lived in a country where the military routinely raped its citizenry (and I pass no judgement here whatsoever on whether this is happening in Zimbabwe), I hope I would question precisely the elected leadership of that country, who are after all in charge of the armed forces. If a president of a country cannot stop her armed forces from raping civilians, what exactly can she do? But this is for the Zimbabweans to question, critique, and bring to account - it cannot be a pretext for neo-colonial meddling. At the very most, and I say this reservedly, it may be a matter for the African Union to investigate if it so chooses. But the last soldiers of the Empire left Zimbabwe some time ago, and they should never return.

edited for clarity

[The Magistrate]

146. Indeed, Sir

Where things are done consistently by state agents, the head of state must bear some responsibility: how this can apply to Milosevic and Bush and Pinochet and not to Mr. Mugabe escapes me. The reports are credible, and well in line with the general run of human behavior.

It is certainly up to the people of Zimbabwe to deal with this misrule; but it certainly appropriate for persons who do not live there to denounce it.

My own view is that of Mr. Adams: "America is the friend of freedom everywhere, but the champion only of her own." Matters must be in the midst of, or clearly tending towards, grotesque extremities of massacre before outside intervention is truely appropriate.

[DulceDecorum]

128. How about we concentrate on the rape rooms of Abu Ghraib?

There is DOCUMENTED PROOF of forcible rape
occurring within Abu Ghraib
and elsewhere
at the instigation of the US.

Mugabe is not evil. he was VERY instrumental in averting the coup d'etat of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea. This coup was organized and financed by the officials connected to the governments of the US, the UK and Spain.A mercenary by the name of Simon Mann, who is notorious for his crimes against humanity and also for operating a death squad known as executive outcomes (or Sandline) was apprehended in Zimbabwe itself when his plane-load of cutthroats landed to steal arms. Simon Mann is a friend and former neighbor of Mark Thatcher, son of Margaret.

The coup was engineered so that Riggs Bank, which was being run by Jonathan Bush, uncle to Dubya, would not have to replace ALL THE MONEY THEY HAVE STOLEN FROM EQUATORIAL GUINEA.
It seems that the oil companies tricked Obiang into opening an account in this bank and then the oil companies claim to have paid huge amounts of money into this account.
Obiang was scammed.
There is no EQ oil money in Riggs Bank.
Officials within this US -run bank
conspired to defraud
AN ENTIRE AFRICAN NATION OF ITS REVENUE.

Lest you say that this cannot possibly be true,
allow me to point a finger straight at Halliburton
and its two subsidiaries,
Kellogg Brown & Root,
and Altanmia Commercial Marketing Co.
These two Halliburton subsidiaries were charged with the responsibility of taking FREE OIL from Kuwait into Iraq to supply the US military and quite possibly the Iraqi people.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/kuwait/?id=13008
Halliburton took this
FREE OIL FROM KUWAIT
and charged the US government SO MUCH MONEY
that everyone began complaining that
that they should get the oil from Turkey instead.
In other words,
Halliburton took the GIFT OF FREE OIL FROM KUWAIT
and sucker-punched the US citizen in the gut
in much the same way
that the people of Equatorial Guinea were treated.

Robert Mugabe scotched the coup d'etat planned for Obiang.
Coups are against international law
and also the internal laws of both the UK and Spain.
The US heeds no law.

Nowhere in the US does one hear of the valiant deed
done by Robert Mugabe
who acted to save the lives of MILLIONS of African people
from marauding thieves.
No.
All we get to hear
are stories involving the legendary virility of the African men,
and now, the African boys as well.

If ANYONE has ACTUAL proof
of rape rooms such as are found in Abu Ghraib,
then produce it.

But the word of the BBCanswertoJudithMiller
is not something that we can accept.
JUst look at how she twists her reports.

VIII. PROTEST AND REPRESSION IN THE NIGER DELTA
On October 9, approximately 400 youths occupied Shell’s Forcados terminal for several hours, protesting non-payment of compensation for Mobil’s January oil spill. Fifteen Shell flow stations remained closed for much of the following month.133
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/nigeria/Nigew991-08.htm
133
http://millennium-debate.org/ind6nov.htm

[DulceDecorum]

122. Every one of those links is suspect

and the breakdown appears to be very very sensitive.

Suffice it to say that three of those "journalists" have previously been deported from various nations for falsehood and the fourth has been arrested.
All are connected to the BBC and the BBC has a charter which is subject to governmental control.

And I must say that
Zimbabwe is most certainly NOT a nation of pedophiles.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

130. "BBC has a charter which is subject to governmental control"

Can you name an international news organisation that is more respected for its integrity and impartiality than the BBC? I can't.

I have seen no evidence that the BBC are a bunch of neocolonial racialists like you suggest, do you have any evidence?

[DulceDecorum]

138. The BBC is constitutionally established by a Royal Charter

and has been so from the very early days of its existence. The first Charter ran from 1 January 1927 to 31 December 1936, and we are now approaching the end of the eighth Charter. The fixed length of the Charter allows the Secretary of State an opportunity, every ten years or so, to look carefully at the BBC’s role, functions and structure. We are taking this opportunity now, as the current Charter comes to an end on 31 December 2006.
http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/

Rupert vs. the BBC -- The 'Foxification' of Britain
by Dame Anita Roddick
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1023-02.htm


Copy of Royal Charter for the continuance of The British Broadcasting Corporation
ELIZABETH THE SECOND by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Our other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith:

TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, GREETING!

WHEREAS on the twentieth day of December in the year of our Lord One thousand nine hundred and twenty-six by Letters made Patent under the Great Seal, Our Royal Predecessor His Majesty King George the Fifth granted unto the British Broadcasting Corporation (hereinafter called "the Corporation") a Charter of Incorporation
AND WHEREAS on divers dates by Letters made Patent under the Great Seal, further Charters of Incorporation and Supplemental Charters have been granted unto the Corporation, the last such Charter having been granted to the Corporation on the seventh day of July One thousand nine hundred and eighty-one ("the Existing Charter")
AND WHEREAS the period of incorporation of the Corporation under the Existing Charter will expire on the thirty-first day of December One thousand nine hundred and ninety-six and it has been represented unto Us by Our right trusty and well beloved Counsellor Virginia Bottomley Our Secretary of State for National Heritage, that it is expedient that the Corporation should be continued for the period ending on the thirty-first day of December two thousand and - six.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/info/policies/charter/

[magellan]

161. So where does it say the Beeb is under government control?

The article you cited, Rupert vs. the BBC -- The 'Foxification' of Britain, clearly states that the value of the BBC derives precisely from the fact that it is NOT subject to government pressure, since it's funded by the TV tax. How long that survives is down to the British people. (I, for one, hope they stick with it. SKY NEWS SUCKS. It's FAUX NEWS with a British accent.)

Explain again why you're trashing BBC reporters as government suck-ups?

[DulceDecorum]

143. RE: child rape camps

Do you honestly believe that the men of Africa have nothing better to do than to rape children for hours on end in front of an audience?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

158. I never said any such thing and you know that

[DulceDecorum]

56. They said much the same thing

about Martin Luther King Jr. when he was alive.

[truebrit71]

53. Apparently they can't feed themselves...

..or do you not watch the news....

It's Animal Farm as far as that pig Mugabe is concerned, even though he used to be on the outside looking in, he now acts the same way as his "oppressors"...

It has bugger all to do with right and wrong, and EVERYTHING to do with money and power....

BTW, where are the white farmers that have owned the farms for generations supposed to go? Having lived there and owned and worked the land for generations doesn't that then become their home?

Or should we just re-adjust and re-locate everyone around the planet?

Bloody stupid idea, using bloody stupid logic...

[anotherdrew]

64. it's not ALL about mugabe

Lot of new farmers, I hope they know how to work their new farmland and keep it fertile. anyone heard anything about how they are doing with this?

[DulceDecorum]

65. The same press that supresses the Downing Street Minutes

claims that Mugabe is awful.

The same press that cannot see Bush's Barberini Faun's
eight and one half inches of tumescent glory
says that people in a nation that they have never themselves stepped in
are in jeopardy.

You aske where the white "farmers" are supposed to go.
Back where they came from.
You ask if we should just re-adjust and re-locate everyone around the planet.
That is PRECISELY what the British did when the oppressed much of the worls under their so-called Empire. Now, the chickens can go home to their rightful roosts.

And yes the Brutish Empire was indeed
a "Bloody stupid idea, using bloody stupid logic."

[truebrit71]

68. That is complete and total bollocks....

..and you KNOW it....

Your head in the clouds fantasy about sending white farmers "back to where they came from" is so fucking naive it's laughable..If they have lived there for four generations WHERE THE FUCK ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO MOVE TO?

And BTW, it's the same BRITISH PRESS that GAVE us the Downing Street memo that is calling Mugabe a murderous thug.

The press corps in the U.S. couldn't find Zimbabwe on a map even if you spotted them the continent first....

[DulceDecorum]

75. So what do they advocate doing to all those people

that they call "illegal immigrants?"
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/20050601-1152-mexico-repatriatingmigrants.html
What of their children who have achieved citizenship simply by being born in that nation? Should these infant citizens also be deported from the land of their birth? Should family be split apart?
http://law.vanderbilt.edu/journal/33-03/33-3-4.html

Remind me,
to whom did those white farmers
and their ancestors
present their immigration papers?

Those white farmers have refused to assimilate into the fabric of Zimbabwe. The Territorial Cases used the "assimilation" argument to damn the residents of US territories to perpetual slavery by Congress.

There are certain principles of natural justice inherent in the Anglo-Saxon character, which need no expression in constitutions or statutes to give them effect or to secure dependencies against legislation manifestly hostile to their real interests."
(Downes v. Bidwell, 182 U.S. 244 at 280)

Zimbabwe is playing by those self-same Anglo-Saxon rules.
But I guess it is always different when you own the ox that has been gored.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4226949.stm

[truebrit71]

80. Thanks for not answering my question...

..as usual on this topic you have nothing new, or insightful to bring to the table.

I ask you again, where are these people who have lived there for four generations or longer supposed to go?

You see, none of the buggers that are alive NOW were alive THEN, or are you suggesting that EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE has to re-locate to a "homeland" they weren't born in, and have no wish or desire to move to?

[DulceDecorum]

82. Many have DUAL citizenship with, and ALREADY LIVE in Britain.

You can keep their skank behinds.

Racist Ian Smith was the prime minister of Rhodesia which is what the British renamed Zimbabwe after they stole it from those to whom it belonged.

Insight: Was the Smith family considered a large landholder?
IS: My farm is the standard size of farms in that area. Farms were divided throughout the country in keeping with the type of agriculture in the area where they were established. In the low veldt areas, where it is dry like Texas, there were big ranches, 20,000 up to 50,000 acres. And then, when you came to Matabeleland, they were down to 10,000 acres. In the midlands, where I am, they were down to 6,000 acres. Then when you went into the higher rainfall areas of Mashonaland, they went down to under 3,000 acres. The plan was to let a man live there with his wife and bring up his family in decent conditions and give employment to black people.
http://rhodesian.server101.com/ian_smith_still_optimistic_about.htm

That land was emptied of black people who were forced into concentration camps. The press like to harp on the fact that much of that land is still unfarmed, but more and more of it is being used these days. Hence all the British tears.

You worry about the people who have opressed others for four long generations and breathe not one word of concern for those who have lived in that region for four HUNDRED generations.
Where are those people, the ones who have lived there for FOUR HUNDRED generations supposed to go?
London?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

84. white land isn't going to working people, it's going to ZANU-PF

workers, Mugabe cronies. It's also being sold to China and Libya in return of foreign currency and oil.

[DulceDecorum]

88. Link?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

90. Here you go

Influential ZANU PF politicians and their cronies, feeding on the deeply-rooted political patronage system, have emerged as some of the most voracious acquirers of land. They reduced a scheme meant to redistribute land equally among landless Zimbabweans into a senseless orgy of land grab.

Most of those implicated have largely remained faceless despite two government-sponsored investigations into the redistribution exercise.

Politicians are said to have used their mothers, sisters and brothers, among others, as fronts to acquire multiple farms in direct violation of the government’s publicly stated policy of one man, one farm.

Thus, they have deprived more deserving cases in the form of the country’s landless peasants who bore the brunt of the liberation struggle.

Link: http://www.fingaz.co.zw/fingaz/2004/April/April23/5233.shtml

[DulceDecorum]

100. Actually, I was looking for China and Libya land purchases.

I thought that both those nations had quite a bit of their own land stashed away so I was hoping to discover more about these new acquisitions in Zimbabwe.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

104. Here's a link about China land purchases

Zimbabwe's New Colonialists: Robert Mugabe begins selling off his country to curry favor with the Chinese.
by Roger Bate
05/25/2005 12:00:00 PM

Harare
PARAMILITARY UNITS armed with batons, riot shields, and tear gas patrolled main roads in Zimbabwe's capital last weekend as police warned they would not tolerate protests against their crackdown on street trading--the only livelihood for thousands of poor township dwellers.

The police, under direct orders from Didymus Mutasa, the head of the secret police (Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organization), have brutally removed any competition to Chinese traders whose shops have sprung up around the capital over the past few years. Mutasa said law and order had to be preserved and Harare's Police Chief, Superintendent Oliver Mandipaka, said 9,653 people were arrested in the five-day blitz on street vendors, flea market stalls, and other informal businesses.

This crackdown appears to be part of an orchestrated pro-China initiative. Mutasa, who is now overseeing the distribution of land to the Chinese, would not comment on charges that the Mugabe regime is giving tobacco farming land to the Chinese in exchange for war planes and other arms. What is certain is that the Zimbabwean government is buying these arms and the only imminent threat to Mugabe is his own people.

Police Chief Mandipaka said people were preparing to demonstrate but that police were ready and commuter minibuses (the main form of transport across Zimbabwe) were prevented from entering the city center. As Zimbabweans fight off hunger and oppression, some have had the courage to fight back. Angry demonstrators clashed with police over the weekend in the most serious unrest since President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu PF party stole a landslide victory in the March 31 parliamentary general election.

More at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/654nqqde.asp

[DulceDecorum]

107. Thanks for the link.

Roger Bate is a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Enterprise_Institute

AEI provides a home and literary launching pad for arch-conservative scholars like Charles Murray("The Bell Curve") and Dinesh D'Souza ("The End of Racism"), as well as former conservative office-holders like U.N. ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and Dan Quayle's chief of staff William Kristol. Long-time AEI associates also include Judge Robert Bork and now Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. AEI recipients of Bradley money routinely appear on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal (From "Downsizing the American Dream")
http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/aei.htm

The differences between the hate-mongering of the (Council of Conservative Citizens) and mainstream conservative thought should not obscure the fact that both are at base fundamentally concerned with the question of how to manage the "hordes of color" who have long outnumbered Europeans globally, and soon will be the majority in this country.
CCC expresses this concern explicitly: "We’re only 9 percent of the world’s population, white Europeans, and our country’s going to majority nonwhite soon," Gordon Lee Baum, the council’s CEO, complained in a Washington Post interview (1/17/99). "Why can’t European Americans be concerned with this genocide? Is that racial to say that?" CCC’s strategy for dealing with this is re-segregation, an attack on interracial marriages, closing U.S. borders to immigrants of color and tacit support of the Ku Klux Klan.
The same concern about global and national reality of European populations being outnumbered by non-European populations is implicit, occasionally even explicit, in the work of AEI fellows. In a New York Times Magazine (11/23/97) story on declining population growth rates, for example, AEI’s Ben Wattenberg fretted:
The West has been the driving force of modern civilization, inexorably pushing towards democratic values. Will that continue when its share of the total population is only 11 percent? Perhaps as less developed countries modernize, they will assimilate Western views. Perhaps the 21st will be another "American century." Perhaps not.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1449

[rostombulus]

109. Zimbabwe

Just so you are clear on things, since Mugabe's brilliant rule, Zimbabwe has gone from a net food exporter to a net food importer.

Freedom of speech and association are denied and the last two elections were, to be charitable, fraudulent.

What he does to whites is irrelevant, what is relevant is his policies are highly destructive to his country and only benefit him and his cadres, not the nation as a whole.

If you sleep better because you look up to his type of leadership, I pity you.

[DulceDecorum]

112. And under Ian Smith's brilliant rule

how were matters for the black people of Zimbabwe?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

149. Ian Smith's tyrrany justifies Mugabe's tyrrany?

Sure that exonerates Robert Mugabe. :eyes:

[fujiyama]

152. Brown people

haven't been treated well by Mugabe either.

What about all the Indians that have fallen into the same trap? Since they were successful businesspeople, they've been scapegoated and persecuted by the government under Mugabe as well. They weren't colonists or imperialists. They were brought in and they've stayed by generations.

Mugabe is a racist, authoritarian, piece of shit. I couldn't care less if the US and UK have "had it in for him". He's a thug. Just because Bush/Blair don't like him, doesn't mean I have to like him.

Note, this doesn't mean I favor force to remove him, but I sure have no use for him and am baffled that there are apologists for him on this board.

[David__77]

15. The South African Pan-Africanist Congress slogan was...

"One Settler, One Bullet." I do not support that position of wiping settler colonialists out as a group, but I certainly sympathize with the rage the African people feel toward this class of people. Expropriating the bulk of the assets of the settlers and giving land to the poorest of the farmers is not some sort of "radical" proposition. It is a basic land reform measure that has been utilized in many countries. I do not believe Zimbabwe should forcibly deport any current residents.

[The Magistrate]

27. The Problem, Sir, Is This

Mr. Mugabe has been in power for many years without taking this step. During that time, the country was prosperous, to the point of being refered to from just about all points of the political spectrum as the great success story of African independence. As it often will, a general level of propsperity has bred political impatience with one-party strong-man rule, and Mr. Mugabe found his hold on power challenged by a native midle class and intelligensia. He has resorted to manufacturing crisis and appealing to racial feelings in order to maintain his grip on rule of the place. Make no mistake, Sir: what is involved here is not national independence or justice or any other thing but the maintainance of a strong-man by whatever means he feels will serve that end.

Expropriation is a matter that ought to be taken in hot blood and a timely fashion; it generally has a decent measure of justice in it when so done. Most of the land-owners now ae not the original colonists, many are not even their descendants, but people who purchased land in good faith, with the encouragement of Mr. Mugabe's government in doing so.

[David__77]

39. Of course it's opportunism, I realize that.

But I still believe that it is a measure of justice. And just because it may have passed to others does not matter--it didn't rightly belong to those who benefitted from selling it. And it also does not matter that Mugabe put a lid of the people who would have carried out expropriation earlier--it was not his right to do so either.

[The Magistrate]

42. Our Disagreement, Sir, Is Probably Less Than Meets The Eye Here

My inclination is generally to support the distribution of large estates to the landless. Very little contributes more assuredly to stability than a wide class of small holders. But as with most things, there is a right way and a wrong way to go about it, and a thing, even a right thing, done in the wrong way seldom has a good result....

[DulceDecorum]

35. The land of Zimbabwe belongs to the people of Zimbabwe.

During the second World War, Germany acquired a tremendous amount of land in Europe. After Germany was defeated, THAT LAND WENT BACK TO THE PEOPLE IT WAS STOLEN FROM.
To this day we hear about victims of the Holocaust getting their stuff back from the people who misappropriated it.
How come the people of Zimbabwe, having won their war of independence, are NOT to be given their very own stuff back from the murderous thugs who stole it?
Is it because they are BLACK?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

85. It's not going to the people it was stolen from, it's going to Mugabe

[DulceDecorum]

101. Sounds just like Dubya and the 2000 & 2004 US elections.

But the good thing is that the land will remain
long after Mugabe is gone.

(Wish I could say the same for the USA.)

[Chicago Democrat]

19. Wow you like Maoists killers and Mugabe homophobic goon

squads


Who is evil and who is good

[DulceDecorum]

23. How did homosexuality get into this discussion of African land?

[Chicago Democrat]

29. Mugabe's big issue.... (Homosexuality=Western Colonialism)

(he is truly nuts)
Mugabe links homosexuality and Western colonialism.. ITS SO NUTS..

http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Homophobia.HTML

(snip)
A large number of countries criminalize homosexual activity. The following is a selective list of postcolonial countries that have given the battle against homosexuality an anti-Western flavor:
Zimbabwe: The aforementioned President Mugabe recently prohibited the Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) from participating in the Zimbabwe International Book Fair, reportedly calling them "worse than dogs or pigs." He then argued that, because of their "unnatural perversion," homosexuals were not entitled to basic human rights. Mugabe's remarks have had surprising popularity among his people, some of which has been attributed to the fact that a majority of GALZ leaders are white. Thus, the concept of gay rights could be depicted as a foreign idea, perhaps a threat to the preservation of "native" culture.

http://www.thegully.com/essays/africa/020320_zimbabwe_mugabe.html


(sniP)

What I thought of was Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe who "won" reelection over a week ago largely by unleashing his own Butcher Boys, The National Youth Service Brigade. These young thugs were taught to beat, torture, and kill his opponents. They burned down the huts around villagers who didn't turn up at compulsory pro-Mugabe rallies. They carved political slogans into the living flesh of suspected opponents.

http://www.popmatters.com/columns/criticalnoire/030226.shtml
(snip)

Zimbabwe's Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe, is arguably one of the most rabid examples of that homophobia. Mugabe's homophobia first became an international story when he banned members of Gays and Lesbians of Zimbabwe (GALZ) from the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 1995. Ironically, the theme for the 1995 book fair was Human Rights. Mugabe has been a proponent of "natural rights", arguing that homosexuality is not natural and thus not even protected under the banner of human rights. In response to public criticism of the ban, Mugabe asserted that homosexuals had "no rights at all" and they were "worse than dogs and pigs and should be hounded out of society." (The Nation, 18 September, 1995) When US congressional members Maxine Waters and Barney Frank fired off a critical missive (signed by 70 members of Congress) to Mugabe he responded in kind: "Let the Americans keep their sodomy, bestiality, stupid and foolish ways to themselves, out of Zimbabwe. We don't want these practices here. Let them be gay in the United States and elsewhere. They shall be sad people here." (The Nation, 18 September, 1995). Seven years later, Mugabe jettisoned one of his trusted advisors, Alum Mpofu — at the time head of the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation — after he was witnessed having sexual relations with another man in a Harare restaurant.





(I could'nt make this shit up)

[The Magistrate]

33. This Has Little Relevance To The Issue At hand, Sir

Which is the forcible removal of persons who have fled rural poverty for the city....

[Chicago Democrat]

36. The "relevence" is that Mugabe is truly delusional and a liar

and cares nothing for the people of Zimbabwe, black white or whatever.

[The Magistrate]

38. Still, Sir

Best to stick to the topic here. Feel free to commence a discussion of that matter,d edicated to it, elsewhere, if you wish....

[Chicago Democrat]

44. Its only supportive information that backs up my point.

That Mugabe's government is anathema and bad and awful. I'm suprised that anybody is arguing the other side at all. Remember Jesse Helms, well Mugabe is notorious like that right? so anyway... Love to all Democrats.

[DulceDecorum]

50. Mugabe is sitting on considerable mineral wealth.

It is suspected that Zimbabwe is home to to the fabulous mines refered to by King Solomon.

And THAT is why the black people of Africa are to be opposed in their own land.

[Chicago Democrat]

60. That's really interesting about the mines...

As for who 'owns' anything... especially land....


Well really that's a philosophical question isnt it?



Those mass expulsion and confiscations are open questions and have cause more problems than they have solved. Zimbabwe as a country will be personae non grata on the world stage for awhile now, they can't expect the West to come to their aid as enthusiastically as they would otherwise.

[DulceDecorum]

81. Most nations in the world

would be more than happy
if they were assured that the West Would refrain from
"coming to their aid."

01 Jun 2005 18:17:17 GMT
"Africa has a dependence and need for the bank that stands out among all the many people who need what this bank has to offer," said Wolfowitz.
"There is a long, long way to go but I would find nothing more satisfying than, at the end of my tenure at this institution, to feel that we have played a part in what hopefully could be a period when Africa went from a continent of despair, to a continent of hope," he said.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N0154703.htm

:scared:

[DulceDecorum]

43. Must take after the leader of the "free world."

Which would indicate that Mugabe is good at mimicry.
What say we concentrate on giving him a better example to emulate?

[DulceDecorum]

41. Oh, so Mugabe is protesting Abu Ghraib torture techniques

Now I get it.
I guess Mugabe was also commenting on the activites of a certain gay American election-fixer by the name of R. Gregory Stevens.

In 1992, Mr. Stevens, 30, went to work for the Republican lobbying powerhouse of Black, Manafort, Stone & Kelly.Roger Stone, a former partner, remembered Mr. Stevens as a "very engaging, fun guy to talk to" and a "quintessential staff man, very thorough and focused."Early on, Mr. Stevens made clear he wanted to work overseas, Mr. Stone said, and the firm, which played a behind-the-scenes role in elections in Angola, Kenya, Nigeria, Thailand and the Philippines, among other countries, was happy to oblige. ............
Mr. Livingstone said Mr. Stevens had compiled a record of 18 victories for presidents or prime ministers in 26 elections worldwide.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/26/arts/01mcdo.html?pagewanted=2

[David__77]

24. That's not correct.

I see the Nepalese movement as a genuine liberation movement fighting for a constituent assembly to form a democratic republic instead of the current absolute monarchy. I do not support Mugabe, but I do not think the US should intervene in either country, and I do think that land redistribution is a basic democratic measure in Zimbabwe that is long overdue. Thousands of martyrs laid down their lives in the liberation struggle and their families and others deserve it.

[Chicago Democrat]

31. Yes, I can respect a genuine liberation movement.

But the Nepali revolutionaries are Maoists.


Crazy, fanatical, totally looney and not sustainable beyond the "revolution" Maoists!


Lets not talk about that here though, oK? Not related to Zimbabwe except in that Mugabe is probably more insane than the Maoists are.

[Vladimir]

114. And you are pretty much correct on all counts

I would only quibble to the extent that the Magistrate does above - Mugabe is now more a hindrance than a help to the issue. Indeed he has given the West a very easy hate figure which will make future land redistribution much more difficult IMO. Nontheless, we are in no position whatsoever to judge Robert Mugabe, because any judgement we lay down would be a pretext for colonialist meddling.

PS The Nepalese are of course freedom fighters - one can only wish them the best of luck in their struggle for liberation.

[Mojorabbit]

28. What I see here

is the US in thirty years. Peak oil will have hit and possibly economic disaster long before. Will people be living in shanty towns near the big cities after losing everything and looking for food? Will they advocate that the big corporate farms be subdivided?
Will the gov be razing the shanty cities and making mass arrests?

[Chicago Democrat]

40. My goddess I pray not! No, I really think it will be a bit better than

this.

But I totally agree it could get that bad. I guess have more faith in my neighbors. Zimbabwe's colonial past still oppresses them. We do have a 200 year tradition at least. Local governments should survive. I'm guessing maybe 6 countries in the US...



BlueState Middle West/East Coast may stick together


Western US = Wasteland, wild west desert

California


Florida

Confederacy


The Great Lakes will become extremely valuable also Mississippi as water becomes the new Oil. Steam engines. Coal. Lots of pollution. Mercury causes massive deformities. Earth's population contracts. Mass starvation

[truebrit71]

49. Mugabe is a murdering bastard and needs to be tried...

...for his crimes....

PERIOD.

[DulceDecorum]

54. So how is Margaret Thatcher's son Mark doing these days?

When is HIS trial coming up?

Mark Thatcher trial postponed
http://www.guardian.co.uk/equatorialguinea/story/0,15013,1359317,00.html

The bugger has admited guilt.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/equatorialguinea/story/0,15013,1389338,00.html

[truebrit71]

58. I thought we were talking about that murderous bastard Mugabe?

What the hell does Maggie's son have to do with anything?

And it would appear that he at least stands a chance of being prosecuted? How about your boy Mugabe? Hmmmmm?

Didn't think so...

[DulceDecorum]

69. Mugabe is NOT a boy.

Unlike the sod known as Mark.

And if you truly have no idea of the tension between the Thatchers and Bushes on one side and Mugabe on the other, may I suggest that you consult with Google?

[anotherdrew]

62. Has he said anything about when how or if he plans to 'retire' ?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

86. Yes, when he dies n/t

[Anarcho-Socialist]

89. To those who defend Mugabe...

...his child rape camps which "build character for young boys":

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/03/22/1047749994019.html?oneclick=true

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,916191,00.html

http://www.samara.co.zw/infoline/aug02/26_aug.htm

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/panorama.1487.html

------------
His country has 300%+ inflation after he confiscated white land and instead of giving it to the poor, it went to Zanu-PF workers, Mugabe cronies and some was sold to China and Libya in return of foreign currency and oil.

Robert Mugabe once stated that he admired Hitler.

His elections were flawed, with the imprisonment of political opponents, opposition supporters murdered by mobs of Zanu-PF supporters, free press shut down and foreign journalists expelled, stuffed-ballot boxes and phantom voters voting for Mugabe, and foreign food aid confiscated by ZANU-PF officials and denied to opposition supporters..

Mugabe isn't a hero of the left fighting against western imperialism; he's a bigoted, homicidal tyrant seduced by power who simply talks the language of freedom but at the same time he lets people starve.

[Name removed]

95. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

119. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[muriel_volestrangler]

127. There are some people all over the world who would do things like that

Germans, Pakistanis, Americans, Russians ... Why would you think that Africans would be an exception? Every society has some people who hurt and torture, and there are plenty of examples of it being done as state policy.

[DulceDecorum]

129. Prove it.

Just prove it.
Go on, try.
Try to PROVE your allegation.

We are waiting .....

[Anarcho-Socialist]

132. What type of proof are you looking for?

You've already dismissed out of hand accounts of young African rape victims who've come forward and alleged rape and beatings suffered on them by Mugabe's militias. In your head it's all a "BBC/colonialist conspiracy."

The South African media is full of accounts of political intimidation, rape, beatings and death by Zanu-pf militias in Zimbabwe. Yet South Africa retains close working ties with Zimbabwe - oh, wait I suppose they're in on this big BBC conspiracy too :eyes:

What proof would you accept? Are you only going to accept it when Zimbabwe admits it? Mugabe isn't going to drop to his knees and admit that his loyalist militias are terrifying civilians and raping girls and young women, and he's not doing anything to stop it.

[DulceDecorum]

136. Find us a few untainted journalists,

preferably African ones,
who support your statements.

Rape rooms?
Or fiction written by some wannabe Margaret Mitchell.

In a remote corner of Zambia stands a "magnificent three-storey pink-bricked mansion, with a tower in the centre, a red tiled roof, and a line of elegant arches supporting a first-floor terrace from which a Union Jack fluttered ... Part Tuscan manor house, part English ancestral home ... something one might find in Surrey or Hampshire, belonging to a duke or a lord."
http://africanhistory.about.com/library/books/blreview-africahouse.htm

In the meantime,
we shall amuse ourselves by reading up on the career and fortunes of a female freedom fighter (terrorist to you)
from Zimbabwe
who used to go by the name Teurai Ropa (spill blood).
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/index.cfm?c_id=2&ObjectID=9001891

[muriel_volestrangler]

140. What, my allegation that Africans are like other people?

I said (in reply to your now deleted post, which, if I remember correctly, claimed that African men would never carry out rape under orders) that there have been men who rape and torture as part of the state all over the world, and there's no reason to expect Africans to be different. Now you want me to prove that Africans have the same basic moral makeup as non-Africans? Well, from personal experience, I'd say they are. I'm not aware of any study that claims they are different. Are you? What differences are you claiming for them? Do you claim the difference for anyone born in the continent, or just certain cultures there?

[Name removed]

144. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[anotherdrew]

125. oh I agree fwiw

I just don't see any functional model for dealing with such thugs. What are we to do about him? Isn't there a Pan-African Union comming into existence? IF he's attacked, he and his supporters will fade into the bush and fight a cival war for how many decades?

[DulceDecorum]

137. Well then,

I guess we can't spill the beans on those links now,
can we?

[Name removed]

141. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DulceDecorum]

142. RE: child rape camps which "build character for young boys":

Do you have any idea of how HORRIBLE that accusation is?

[AP]

108. Does anyone here read SWANS?

http://www.swans.com/library/subjects/africa.html

Here's an interesting article:

http://www.swans.com/library/art9/ankomah7.html

[Zynx]

113. Mugabe is a racist totalitarian moron

I fail to understand why ANYONE supports him, including members of DU who should know better.

[DulceDecorum]

120. The US /UK hates Mugabe. Everyone in the world knows that.

It is not that we support Mugabe but rather that we support the Treaty of Westphalia and the concept of a sovereign state.

The US Congress has no right whatsoever to tell the nations of Africa how to conduct their internal affairs.

And as for the charges of racism,
just how hard
did ANY of those Rhodesian whites
ever fight
for the rights of the black people who owned the land
that they were denied?

In cross-examination, Coetzee said he was never involved in the killing of anyone by means of chemical substances. Coetzee did not know about the poisoned clothing found by Van der Spuy.
Coetzee said he was aware of experiments carried out with organophosphates on clothing in Rhodesia.In re-examination, Pretorius asked Coetzee to expand on his knowledge of organophosphates used in Rhodesia. He said he was approached on one occasion (prior to his departure from EMLC at the end of August, 1980) by a courier for Rhodesian Special Forces, who gave him a typed report, in point form, of toxic substances, including organophosphates, applied to various parts of the body, and outlining the exact results/effects. He turned the document over to the Surgeon General at the time, Gen Nico Nieuwoudt.
http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/archive/cbw/34.html

How did the Rhodesian Special Forces know the precise effects
that these toxic substances would have
when applied to various parts of the body?
And how can you suggest that these demons be allowed back into Zimbabwe?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

131. Agreed n/t

[Vladimir]

115. Its not about being pro-Mugabe

its about the colonial attitudes, the class interests, and the hypocrisy of it all. The instinct to interfere in defense of human rights is both formidable and admirable, but it must be resisted nonetheless. For one thing, while sitting in judgment over the "developing nations", we would never be willing to submit our own leadership - or indeed ourselves, in whose names these acts are committed - to such judgment by a more powerful entity. For another, this rhetoric of intervention has been used, time and again, to justify conquests of land and resources in the interests of our ruling class. Human rights do not exist in a vacuum, they are a social construct like everything else - used where they suit the interests of powerful nations and discarded where they harms them. Yet we are continually asked to support armed intervention on such a basis, each time developing a collective amnesia with regard to the myriad of crimes already committed under the banner of humanitarianism. Each time we are asked to believe that lessons have been learnt, and next time will be cleaner, better, more efficient. And this is a fantasy I will not entertain.

[DulceDecorum]

121. Hear hear

Allow me to buy you a beer.
:beer:

:toast:

[Anarcho-Socialist]

135. I respect your opinion, Vladimir

I hope I can ask you this...

The Wilson and Callahan governments of the 1960s and 1970s condemned the Apartheid regime in South Africa (a former British colony) - would you have also said that still in that situation Britain had no right to criticise South Africa?

[Vladimir]

139. Good question

The first and obvious point is that South Africa in the 60s and 70s was no longer a colony, but it was a colonial state. The whites ruling it may have been there for a number of generations, but they were still settlers. So it is different from Zimbabwe, where the current government pretty much led the anti-colonial struggle. That does not place Mugabe beyond all criticism, but it does place him in a different category. One might almost view it as a duty to criticise an aparthaid which your own policies largely helped bring about (modern-day apartheid in SA dates back to about 1910, though the form changed over time, and AFAIK the roots of it were at least partly in the peace agreement signed with Britain at the end of the Boer Wars). Zimbabwe on the other hand broke away from colonial rule - its faults after that are its own, and what I would say is that I am simply deeply suspicious of the motives for the criticism. No doubt, progressives should not refrain from criticising Mugabe and supporting Zimbabwean progressives (in or outside Zanu-PF) where we feel mistakes have been made. But our government has no credibility doing it.

[The Magistrate]

148. One Small Point, Sir

If recollection from those days serves, Ian Smith's government severed ties with the Commonwealth some years before the liberation movement succeeded, because of a lack of support for suppression of the guerrillas by the English government.

Mr. Mugabe was the leader of one faction of the resistance, and outmanouvered rivals in large part because of co-operation with the remaining white settler power structure. This gave him a coin of prosperity, reducing economic disruption in the early years of his rule, and went a long way towards securing his initial popularity.

A good deal of his present difficulties are "blow-back" from this. The country was prosperous enough to possess in time a middle class of professionals who did not owe their positions to crony-ism dating to revolutionary days, and this has begun to chafe under the effective one-party rule from which they are excluded. There is a patchwork of regional and ethnic rivalries underlying the current difficulties as well; Zimbabwe, in common with most African states, being a patchwork of what were once independent and often hostile tribal entities before the colonists arrived. There is no real doubt that the opposition to Mr. Mugabe is native to the country.

[Vladimir]

153. I wasn't denying that opposition to Mugabe

was native to the country, although as I am sure you have noticed my knowledge of the history here is quite sketchy. My point was rather that Mugabe was native to the country, whereas the Afrikaaner were not. Ultimately, I guess I don't mind British governments criticising and sanctioning the remnants of white power in Africa, because I have little sympathy for these remnants. But I would also note that neither the ANC nor anyone else was calling for armed intervention by outside forces, to the best of my knowledge.

Thanks for the clarification anyhow.

[The Magistrate]

154. Indeed, Sir

Come to the pinch, better a home-grown rogue than an interloper is my view as well.

It is also worth noting, given the tonme some portions of this discussion have taken, that expressing disapproval is not identical with demanding invasion. Mugabe deserves disapproval; it is hard to see any necessity for, or possible good emerging from, military action against him by Western powers. Nor is there the slightest prospect of it, if only for lack of available troops.

[Vladimir]

155. Indeed my friend

it is always a pleasure to exchange thoughts with you.

[SoCalDem]

133. "...sent back to their rural homes..."

Are they still existing??or has their land been gobbled up by now?

[Anarcho-Socialist]

134. The land has gone to Robert Mugabe's friends and cronies

instead of landless peasants. I have no idea where these poor people are going to go - or what they're going to eat.

[dArKeR]

147. Mugabe begins huge crackdown in Zimbabwe NY TIMES

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/06/03/2003257750

Facing rising unrest over a collapsing economy, Zimbabwe's authoritarian government has apparently adopted a scorched-earth policy toward potential enemies, detaining thousands of people, burning homes and street kiosks, and routing large numbers of people from makeshift homes in major cities.
The scope of the operation, which began in mid-May, is unknown, in part because a nationwide gasoline shortage has prevented some of those following events in Zimbabwe from monitoring the impact firsthand.

But reports in the local press and from witnesses indicate that the police have detained or arrested as many as 30,000 residents in big cities and evicted hundreds of thousands more from shantytowns on the fringes of most cities.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

157. Zimbabwe crackdown 'nearing end'

Zimbabwe's police say their operation against street traders and illegal housing has entered its final day.

More than 22,000 people have been arrested and tens of thousands left homeless in the two-week crackdown.

The government says the move is needed to clean up Zimbabwe's cities but some feel it is punishment for areas which voted for the opposition.

The UN has demanded President Robert Mugabe stop the evictions, which it describes as a new form of "apartheid".

More at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4605935.stm