Queen Strips Mugabe of Knighthood

[brooklynite]

Source: New York Times

Queen Elizabeth II has stripped Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he has presided, the British Foreign Office announced Wednesday.

The rebuke showed the extent of international frustration over Mr. Mugabe’s insistence to go ahead with a presidential runoff on Friday, even though his sole opponent, Morgan Tsvangirai, pulled out of race on Sunday because of the persistent violence and intimidation against him, his party and their supporters.

Mr. Mugabe’s government has had a long history of human rights abuses, but he was granted an honorary knighthood during an official visit to England in 1994 when, the foreign office contends, “the conditions in Zimbabwe were very different.”

But with the widespread attacks against the opposition, the foreign office said the honor could no longer be justified. Stripping a dignitary of an honorary knighthood is exceedingly rare. A foreign office spokesman could think of only one other time it had been done — in 1989 to the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/africa/26zimbabwe.html?em&ex=1214539200&en=3bc1a09cd7245467&ei=5087%0A

---

Well, that'll do the job...

(begging the question of, even when conditions were "different", why anyone thought he deserved a knighthood in the first place?)

[gratuitous]

1. That showed 'im, Betty!

Look out, Mugabe. Or the Crack Judean Suicide Squadron is next, buddy.

[eShirl]

2. Queenslapped

ouch

"We are not amused!"

[jobycom]

3. He pissed off the Queen. Better not drive through any dark tunnels!

:rofl:

[mr_hat]

4. And Arpaio wants his badges back from Shaq.

Who's next? These things happen in threes, you know.

[msanthrope]

5. The irrelevancy of the horse-faced 'Windsor' clan was never

more apparent than at this moment.

[WattleBreakfast]

6. this is significant...

...and damn more than what America is doing, saying, about this catastrophic situation so far.

[msanthrope]

22. No--it's one unelected parasite chiding a dictator who doesn't like elections.

Stripping his knighthood???

What, should Prince Phillip box him about the ears? Slap him with a glove? Call him out?

It's the irrelevant piping up, pretending to 'do something.'

[JerseygirlCT]

30. There's not much she can do, but she did what she could

at least.

Is there much that anyone else can do? (Short of military intervention, that is) His opponent dropped out - because Mugabe essentially holds the entire country hostage.

[Hugabear]

33. It sure is. Why, that Mugabe will have to send back his Royal Knight pin!

Or whatever it is they give you when you're knighted. That will surely show him that his actions won't be tolerated!

[bmbmd]

38. Significant? I'll show you significant.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=215x72019


American's know how to strip honorary titles, too. And welcome to DU.

[nomorenomore08]

12. Are you just dissing the royal family (which is fine by me), or are you sticking up for Mugabe too?

No offense, but it seems like some people on this site (and of the lefty persuasion in general) will defend any dictator, regardless of what said dictator has done to violate human rights, disturb international order, what have you, as long as he happens to identify as a "leftist" or "socialist." Between that, and all the right-wingers serving as apologists for the likes of Pinochet (and pretty much any other Latin American fascist), there seems to be a disturbing level of support for totalitarianism even among citizens of so-called democracies.

[Mike Daniels]

17. As another poster said on a thread yesterday

As long as a leader is anti-West some people will give them a pass to do things that the same person would scream bloody murder about if it was done by someone supported by the Western Powers that be.

[msanthrope]

21. Dissing the Queen. Mugabe's been a inexcuseable thug

for a long time--

Of course, there's a certain irony, isn't there---

one unelected parasite chiding another?

[pretzel4gore]

28. the problem is the rat fink media.....

for example, several US high ranking career military officers were just a few weeks ago fired due to covering up (?) an incident involving nuclear weapons being flown within US airspace. But the news was tucked away and few people even learned about it. This same media then rats out Mugabe; and some of you guys jump to att'n. Fact. The ratfink media only report news when they want to provoke a reaction - the 'reaction' is the purpose of the report, and truth might well have nada to do with the bs. In other words, they try to use our decency, our integrity, our liberalism, our anti racism AGAINST US. Mugabe belongs to a specific tribal group within Zimbabwe, a nation born in bloodshed (freeing itself from us, btw)...and the last goddam world leader i personally concerned with is Mugabe. Bush and harper need 100 percent of our att'n, or they might well unleash ww3 on us. After all, we have no real idea of how terrible the mess the nazipoohs have created-and they've carefully put the fix in so they aren't criminally prosecuted. That is a bigger concern then Mugabe, who, for all we know, might be in brit/US custody (remember Idi Amin? he was CIA the entire time the ratfink media was howling about him; he retired to saudi arabia for gods sake...) all this time

[MasonJar]

24. Why would you demean the queen for doing the right thing? Absurd!

[msanthrope]

26. You mean knighting him in the first place? Mugabe's Fifth Brigade

was around long before 1994....

[kestrel91316]

7. Can we maybe lean on her to strip Caligula of his Preznitcy, too?

[emad]

8. The whole honor fiasco of 1994 is the fault of Prime Minister John Major,

a George H Bush-arselicking tosser who was trying to suck up to Mugabe on Bush Sr's advice.

What a mess.

[asthmaticeog]

9. The Queen. Objects to an “abject disregard for democracy." The Queen.

[DavidDvorkin]

19. Parliamentary democracy. Figurehead monarch. Repeat.

[asthmaticeog]

31. Ironically amusing anyway. Lighten up, Francis. Repeat.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

10. That'll teach him.

Or not.

I do appreciate the sentiment. I just find it a bit shocking that he was ever knighted in the first place.

[nomorenomore08]

11. It's a symbolic gesture, and pretty meaningless. Won't stop the tyrant from doing what he wants.

On the other hand, putting Mugabe in the same exclusive club as Ceaucescu is certainly appropriate. He may not be among the worst of the African dictators, as people on previous threads have noted, but saying that someone isn't as bad as Idi Amin isn't saying much at all.

[chaplainM]

13. Queen Strips Mugabe of Knighthood

Source: NYT

Queen Elizabeth II has stripped Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s strongman president for nearly 30 years, of his honorary knighthood as a “mark of revulsion” at the human rights abuses and “abject disregard” for democracy over which he has presided, the British Foreign Office announced Wednesday.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/26/world/africa/26zimbabwe.html?em&ex=1214539200&en=3bc1a09cd7245467&ei=5087%0A

---

When a hereditary monarch, who rules by divine right, criticizes someone for an '"abject disregard” for democracy,' well, it says something.

[no_hypocrisy]

14. Keep going, Your Majesty.

Ronald Reagan
Rudolph Giuliani

[Skink]

15. Who Knighted him to begin wtih?

[Tangerine LaBamba]

16. Well, it's more than the US is doing

Imagine. We're outshone by Queen Betty.

How pathetic we've become. How shameful.

And still we occupy Iraq, and still children die.

[Marrah_G]

35. You know she doesn't actually rule anything right?

Britain is a Democracy, she is merely a figurehead in a long time tradition.

[gmpierce]

18. fooled again

This is kind of pathetic. Mugabe is currently a lunatic, but thirty years ago he was a prime minister who needed the help of the British. His wife was in effect a Rhodesian citizen - but due to the confused politics of the time she had a Ghanaian passport. She had just lost a child and really needed British permission to stay in England. Going back to Ghana would have put her life in danger.

The British blew her off even after letters from Mugabe directly to Harold Wilson.

They may have given him a knighthood a long time ago - but Mugabe detested the British, and it is unlikely that his feelings are hurt by the current action.

Everything I have read indicates that Mugabe is one of the bad guys. Then I stop and think and I realize that everything I know comes from our MSM - and I have no idea what is going on over there.

[David__77]

20. Stupid English hypocrisy.

People like Mugabe and Ceausescu are knighted when they serve Western interests, regardless of their "human rights" record; when they do the same thing but this displeases the West, the knighthood is revoked. It's laughable.

[nomorenomore08]

27. Agreed. It has little or nothing to do with principles.

nt

[MasonJar]

23. Good for her! Only the second time makes it pretty resounding. She

was smart enough not to even offer the chimp one.

[msanthrope]

25. Umm...yet. Remember that American knighthoods are usually

given out after retirement....Reagan's was in 1989. Schwartzkopf's was given with special permission--so as not to violate the Constitution....

[maxsolomon]

29. Britain knighted Mugabe

but Keith Richards remains absent from the Peerage?

[classysassy]

32. Your royal highness

how about removing Bush's poodle knighthood,Bush and thepoodle have caused more deaths than Mugabe.Double standards,one for black thugs,another for white thugs.

[Book Lover]

34. That certainly was the least she could do (nm)

[Blue_Tires]

36. maybe she can invade and put it under british rule....

[nxylas]

39. Is that the sound of the British right slavering I hear?

Seriously, there's a certain breed of British Tory pundit (led by Paul Johnson, who is often referred to with deliberate irony as "the sane and rational Paul Johnson" even in the RW British press) who long for the recolonization of Africa as a way to restore the supposed glories of the British Empire. It's sad what too much Kipling can do to a person.

[LeftishBrit]

37. Yes, *that'll* teach him...

:sarcasm: