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“EARN AN HONEST LIVING”
Zimbabwe is under siege:
President Robert Mugabe’s onslaught against Zimbabwe’s cities has escalated to claim new targets, with white-owned factories and family homes being demolished in a campaign that has left 200,000 people homeless.
Across the country, Mr Mugabe is destroying large areas of heaving townships and prosperous industrial areas alike ...
Bulldozers spent last week razing [a 70-acre site filled with 24 factories and workshops], destroying all but nine businesses that employed about 1,000 people in a country suffering mass unemployment and economic crisis.
Mugabe’s destruction echoes Mao’s Great Leap Forward:
The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged “urbanites” to go “back to the rural home, to reconnect with one’s roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme”.
UPDATE. Here’s one US academic who thinks the Great Leap Forward was “an extraordinarily creative intervention in Chinese economic development.”
UPDATE II. Speaking of US academics, things aren’t looking too good for Big Chief Lying Weasel.
‘Across Zimbabwe, the United Nations estimates that 200,000 people have lost their homes, with the poorest townships bearing the brunt of Mr Mugabe’s onslaught ... Virtually all the areas singled out for demolition voted for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the last elections. The MDC says that Mr Mugabe ordered the destruction as a deliberate reprisal.’
Meanwhile, Zibabweans wake up and smell the coffee:
‘The Herald, the official daily newspaper, urged “urbanites” to go “back to the rural home, to reconnect with one’s roots and earn an honest living from the soil our government repossessed under the land reform programme”.’
Evil socialist - and killer - Mugabe knows all the jargon.
Democide and megamurder approach. Only all-out rebellion has a chance of saving the people now. And no foreign country is ready and willing to help them.
14 years after the collapse of Soviet communism, decades after the death of Mao and the defeat of the Gang of Four, the heart of darkness is ready to be replayed yet again. We know the script pretty well now. It is not the state, but the people that wither away.—Edward Dahlberg, Do These Bones Live, pub. 1941.
Well, to give that academic some credit, he does say:
None of this is to be taken as indication of the Great Leap Forward’s success, quite the contrary. The policy seems to have been an unmitigated disaster, generating a “crisis” in Chinese society that would ultimately be resolved in ways unfavorable to Mao’s political, economic, and cultural vision of a future China.
I guess he’s enthralled by this bold visionary leap…bummer it caused death and misery for millions.
Posted by Mr. Bingley on 2005 06 06 at 09:54 AM • permalinkTwenty million dead coming up… hey, maybe Europe can intervene and show us how to do it right…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 06 at 10:15 AM • permalinkFour Corners spent an hour on 20 deaths in the Congo, will that help?
Mediawatch chastised a women’s magazine and Andrew Bolt and Piers- they’e pulling out all stops..from little things big things grow.
o/t ABC very concerned that Sky News will get the Asia Pacific contract when it renews next year. Things are looking up.Well, at least we know Mugabe reads Matt Fuck The Small Businessman Yglesias…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 06 at 10:54 AM • permalinkHmmm.
And Tony Blair wants us to give Mugabe money!
No f-ing way!
Posted by memomachine on 2005 06 06 at 11:11 AM • permalinkOf course how silly of me, I forgot the UN actually rewards the abusers.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 06 at 12:06 PM • permalinkScarey stuff, and some like Satya Gabriel think socialist/facist regimes are just peoples movements that yield a disapointing result. Some experiement to be admired as the creative engineering of a nation.
Yikes. ‘Heard an expression which goes - “a young communist has a bad head, an old communist has a bad heart”.
The Pol Pot analogy is right on.
This is an excerpt from a longer article in the Telegraph (UK), filed March 26, 2003, wherein Robert Mugabe compares himself to Hitler:
“President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has compared himself to Adolf Hitler.
At the state funeral of one of his cabinet ministers, Mr Mugabe said: “I am still the Hitler of the time. This Hitler has only one objective, justice for his own people, sovereignty for his people, recognition of the independence of his people, and their right to their resources.
“If that is Hitler, then let me be a Hitler tenfold. Ten times, that is what we stand for.”
The entire article can be read here.
Page-breaking url changed to link by The Management.
Posted by Mystery Meat on 2005 06 06 at 12:11 PM • permalinkWell he’s certainly modeling himself on Hitler, he didn’t start killing first thing either. Hitler went through many phases before settling on “The Final Solution”.
Only two questions remain, when will Mugabe start killing and when are we going to stop him.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 06 at 12:28 PM • permalinkHeard the Great Leap Forward described as a marked downturn in production from an Economics lecturer a couple of years back. No mention of the 30,000,000 or so who died as the result of a man made famine. But then he had been visiting China for thirty years and the postgrad Foreign Affairs and Trade China sponsored students in the course didn’t approve of negatives about China as they made clear in tuts through their spokesman.
Maybe some lefties can rush over to Zimbabwe and give Mugabe the hugs he so badly needs? That ought to fix things right up, and we don’t have to talk about war.
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 06 at 08:32 PM • permalinkKywong73, do white farmers count? Hell, in the eyes of the UN, do people even count?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2005 06 06 at 08:34 PM • permalinkYeah but they don’t even give a blip on the international radar. I’m talking rounding up people just to kill them.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 06 at 10:47 PM • permalinkSeven snickers and six snorts for the name “Big Chief Lying Weasel.”
I don’t know who this “Tim B.” guy is, but he defiinitely has a knack for appelation.
Remember “Snoop Deanie Dogg” ?
Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
Posted by zeppenwolf on 2005 06 06 at 10:50 PM • permalinkAn official in Mugabe’s government said a few months ago that Zimbabwe would be better off with a million or so fewer people. According to the World Gazetteer, whatever that is, Zimbabwe’s 2005 population is calculated to be 12.01mn, and Zimbabwe’s official 2002 census says 11.63mn. I noticed some Website saying that the current population is already expected to be declining a bit because of AIDS.
I’m no expert, but I would guess that we can expect at least 2mn deaths in Zimbabwe during the next few years, unless Mugabe is somehow stopped or slowed. Another question is whether people will be willing and able to flee rather than be herded into the country which may become killing fields.
(Url fixed. The Management.)
Before we send hundreds of thousands of US troops into Zimbabwe to face Russian guns and machetes wielded by children, it would be nice if Europe and AFRICA itself wanted to get rid of Mugabe and his regime.
I wish we could simply spot Mugabe and his leadership at some celebration and drop a MOAB on them. Just about anything would be better than where things are heading now.
ForNow, you must have hit the backspace key or something, you deleted the last “]” from the closing url tag. Hit “preview” to check you code, folks! Use the Pmcode guide if you aren’t sure something looks right; that’s what I have it linked up there for.
Posted by Andrea Harris, Administrator on 2005 06 07 at 06:40 AM • permalinkThanks for the link to Satya J. Gabriel - China expert - and his views on contemporary China (not). That the man is an idiot is beyond doubt, but here’s a clue to how academics get away with shit like this…
He writes “He Qinglian’s 1998 text Xiandaihua de Xianjing (The Trap of Modernization) published in Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe.
Perhaps this guy does read Chinese, but I think he’s pulling a fast one. Here’s how the book (I have it on my shelf and am looking at it right now) should actually be cited:
Xiandaihua de xianjing: dangdai zhongguo de jingji shehui wenti [The Modernisation Trap: The Economic and Social Problems of Contemporary China] (Beijing: Jinri chubanshe, 1998).
Notice the place of publication and publisher title (Beijing: Jinri Publishing House). Gabriel doesn’t read Chinese, or he’d never write “in Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe”. It just doesn’t make sense (Jinri China Publishing House???). At best it should be “by” Jinri Zhongguo Chubanshe, but even then it would still be wrong.
This guy is trying to make it look like he’s actually read this book (which is only in Chinese to my knowledge). But he’s a liar. Nobody who reads Chinese would make a mistake like that with hanyu pinyin (the system of romanisation for Chinese: e.g., 出版社 = chubanshe = publishing house).
Bit fraud writing on China. But you knew that anyway. I just can’t stand this sort of shit.
#28
Or the East, or the UN, or hell even Africa itself. No one cares (even those whose job it is to care like the UN) except perhaps Howard, who’s been calling Mugabe a prick all along.
Posted by Aging Gamer on 2005 06 07 at 10:54 AM • permalinkLook, most people in the West, esepcially the left, are only interested in their moral standing and are not all that much interested in the plight of the poor or disadvantaged. If one tribe in Africa attacks another, well, that’s sad. But they will say or do little about it.
On the other hand, if a country such as the US or Australia involves itself in an effort to solve a problem, it’s an opportunity for them to make a moral stand against those countries.
Of course, if the US or Australia says “you know, you’re right, we’ll stop trying to help, you go do it”, they will go back to doing nothing.
Posted by wronwright on 2005 06 07 at 01:35 PM • permalinkJust a rhetorical question—has Mugabe actually gone and picked up a shovel himself?
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2005 06 07 at 08:28 PM • permalinkMore on Mugabe—a report by a nun about a “clean-up.”
The Sound of Silence, at The Belmont Club, Monday, June 6, 2005
Here’s who really got “cleaned up” at The Zimbabwean Pundit, Friday, June 3, 2005
Sovereignty
While the EU seems headed for a breakdown in “nation state” status, with the beaurocrats and various governments still seeming to want a sort of EU mini world government, the parts of the world most in need of centralised control (to curb the excesses of people like Mugabe or the Darfur duffers)are still protected by sovereignty, and the ongoing bleat from their cohorts in the UN that any action against mass murderers must be sanctioned by the almighty UN. Hence no action.
So, while Darfurians are being murdered for being in any place at any time, the EU covertly (and against the obvious will of the people) continues to prepare to allow anyone to go anywhere and claim asylum status. Good way to undermine sovereignty. Great way to infiltrate.
See The Stealth Treaty at
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/#39
I agree with most of what you say, although I would cross out the “especially the left”. The reality is that all nations ususally get involved in prevention of genocide, abuse of human rights, etc only when there’s a strong push from public opinion or there’s some definite short or long term national gain to be had. Either way I can’t see anyone getting directly involved in remedying the situation in Zimbabwe in the foreseeable future. Especially when its nearest neighbours are quite happy to kiss Mugabe’s arse
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Don’t forget Pol Pot.