The word “Zimbabwe” comes from the Shona word for “houses of stone”, a description suggestive, in today’s Zimbabwe, of mausoleums. The Harare Times wrings its hands impotently over a nation consigned not only to destruction to pointless destruction without even the benefit of houses of stone.
We in the Diaspora can only watch and listen with horror at the devastation cholera is meting out to the Zimbabwean populace. Reports of mortuaries over-flowing with body bags of both patients and health care workers are befuddling to say the least.
Never ever, in our wildest dreams, did we ever imagine that a government could let its own citizens perish like flies to a preventable and treatable disease like cholera in this century? MDC-USA is deeply saddened by the loss of lives and the suffering our people have to endure.
Even the wildlife are having a hard time of it. When starvation stalks the land, anything goes on the table, whatever Friends of the Earth may say — including elephant. The BBC reports that “Zimbabwean soldiers are being given elephant meat for their rations, a wildlife campaigner has told the BBC. Jonny Rodrigues from the Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force said that several soldiers had complained to him that was the only meat they were given.”
Zimbabwe is not the only African country in trouble. For example, there’s Kenya. “Kenya is to declare a national emergency because of a drought affecting the East African country. … Correspondents say Kenya’s finances are already under strain because of last year’s post-election violence, which badly affected the economy.” Which is not to say that governments are not fighting back, if not against civil war, then against imploding economies. “The Democratic Republic of Congo raised key interest rates to 40 percent and created a crisis team to try and halt the depreciation of the Congolese franc.”
The rate was increased from 28 percent after a drop in oil, wood and mineral-export revenue, as well as spending on a war against rebels in the eastern Congo, caused the franc to drop against the dollar, according to a government statement given to Bloomberg News today in the capital, Kinshasa. The currency has fallen about 23 percent to 677 against the U.S. currency since Oct. 1, according to Bloomberg data.
Forty percent. One of the signs a system is in real trouble is when previously inconceivable numbers are now bandied around like everyday phrases, even in America. Not too long ago, a billion-dollar bailout would have raised eyebrows. Today serious sums start with a “t”. Who would have guessed, when Robert Mugabe was being handed his honorary doctorates by Edinburgh University, the University of Massachusetts and Michigan State University that he would one day preside over the destruction of his country? A lot of people would have guessed, that’s the problem.
Suggested reading, The chapter in Paul Johnson’s “Modern Times” called “The Bandung Generation” It chronicles the grifters and flim flam artists who took over in the post colonial Third World. Another good read is Martin Meredith’s “The Fate of Africa”. Never has a generation produced so many demogogues and second rate con men as the last few decades in Africa. It is a shame because the continent is rich in resources and culture.
Zimbabwe is suffering from western sanctions period. Think of how long will America last with sanctions. Not a single day. This is something I hope Barrack HUSSEIN Obama will sort out. At least he will not have to insist whites be given back the farms they stole from Africans before lifting sanctions.
Ah, I knew it was all the fault of the white farmers!
But why do I recall watching Mugabe say some years ago, speaking of black Zimbabweans, though not necessarily those of his own tribe, “We don’t need all these people around here anyway.”?
It’s actually all turned out just as the last white government said it would, but nobody would listen, just condemn, condemn, condemn.
Bush did it.
Thanks, Trangbang. I’ll check those out.
More excellent reading on the region’s historic trends:
1. The Washing of the Spears by Donald Morris.
2. A Primate’s Memoir by Robert Sapolsky.
The first provides ample evidence of the anti-humanitarian, collectivist tendency of the Horn’s indigenous tribes. The second, of the inbred predilections of simians in all branches of our phylo-genetic tree. Both are bracing, salient, and probably banned by trendy uni’s like Edinburgh’s and the State of Michigan’s.
There are people who have lost the critical ability to distinguish between fiction and reality. They think that when the horrible reality that is coming with BHO in the White House happens they will be able to recall their votes, call up a fixer and order a better show. They believe deep down that reality should operate by the same user friendly rules as their TV, with cable on demand and customer satisfaction surveys. When they are told of bad things in one of the old pink bits on the schoolroom map they watch Out of Africa and send $50 to a worthy cause. Perhaps one of the PJM people know enough Neurology to explain this.
If the world was sane then there would be a distinction between the civilized and the uncivilized with the later ineligible for citizenship in the 25 or so democracies and all non-talking shop functions of the UN shifted to a new League of Democracies that would pay the English to take back administration of failed places like Rhodesia.
“”"”"”"There are people who have lost the critical ability to distinguish between fiction and reality.”"”"”"”"
You’re talking about “mohammed” and his post about “sanctions” above, aren’t you?
How many people who would never have chosen a Robert Mugabe to rule over themselves thought he was good enough for Zimbabwe? Or saw Mugabe as a symbolic atonement for Zimbabwe’s “original sin”, even though logically, giving a man poison is atonement for nothing? It was a political vanity purchase, a fashion statement — just as support for Pol Pot was. Now the Africans, like the Cambodians are paying the price for that fashion statement.
What’s different about today’s global world is that people can no longer retreat into their “vast carelessness” after smashing things up to gratify their vanity. The keffiyeh people wear to fashionable parties is going to be paid for, not just by the poor people in Gaza, but eventually by the partygoers themselves.
7. Roderick Reilly:
You do not believe sanctions have crippled Zimbabwe do you? No leader can be as incompetent as you choose to portray. Mugabe is a hero. And Africa is none of America’s business. They have not come to beg from you have they? Zimbabwe kicked out white farmers about 3500 of them who owned almost 70% of the agricultural land. You know how they got the farms? Their grandparents were mercenaries for Cecil Rhodes who invaded and took over the land and rewarded his soldiers with 9 square miles each. If every country kicks out invading colonist parasites like Mugabe did, this world would have been a much better place.
Desmond Tutu said ‘The white man came and told us to close our eyes and pray. After we opened our eyes, we had the bible and the white man had the land’ he is a nobel pize winner so he is not a dimwit like you.
Leave Zimbabwe alone, they will sort out themselves. Mugabe is 85 he will probably die soon. Save your economy first.
Yeah, Mohammed, Spain has been so much better off since they kicked your ancestors out of Andalusia in 1492. Keep living in your fantasy world while the rest of the world watches Zimbabwe (not Mugabe) die in front of our eyes.
Zimbabwe is making great strides to return to the paradisiacal conditions that obtained before some whites turned part of the place into a bread basket. With average life expectancy now in the mid 30 year range, they don’t have far left to go.
Our economy will survive even the hubris of our government and as a rising tide raises all ships so too the lowering tide does not exactly promise vast fortune to everyone else.
We can choose to trade with Zimbabwe if we please. Meanwhile, let them trade with Cuba and North Korea.
10. Ammo Guy:
If America really wants to help Zimbabweans it should lift the sanctions. Period. And what makes you think everybody wants your stupid type of life. Living and hooked on credit and living up to a hundred. And meanwhile the credit comes from china and the middle east either because they have the decency to save (china) or they cannot spend their money fast enough (gulf sheikdoms with sovereign wealth funds).
Mo, you’re right. It’s none of our business. We will not send a dime of aid or a bag of (non genetically engineered) food to Zimbabwe.
When the people there are angry enough, they’ll take matters into their own hands. And knowing Africa, it will be horrific.
your stupid type of life. Living….and living up to a hundred
I’m sure most don’t wish that fate on you, Mohammed, if you don’t wish it for yourself.
Mo baby, you scamp! You had me so fooled into thinking you were serious until you slipped up…”living up to a hundred”
) Good one, who the heck would want to go thru that when ya got all those virgins waiting for youse? Ya gonna be here all week? Where’s the gig after that cause I gotta catch your act in person? Joisey? Vegas? From what I hear, you’re a blast!
16. Ammo Guy:
Oh yeah virgins here I come. 100′s of them and none of them Americans. America had us thinking we got things wrong once upon a time. Then they voted George Bush who opened our eyes to what spineless idiots they are. And we all heaved a big sigh of relief thinking or dear we almost believed them.
Although they are trying to spoil it by bringing Obama. Lets hold our breaths.
Oooooh I am still imagining what to do with all these virgins waiting for me.
May be you can give me some tips on how to survive the coming o*gies.
Lifeofthemind wrote:
They believe deep down that reality should operate by the same user friendly rules as their TV, with cable on demand and customer satisfaction surveys. When they are told of bad things in one of the old pink bits on the schoolroom map they watch Out of Africa and send $50 to a worthy cause. Perhaps one of the PJM people know enough Neurology to explain this.
I don’t think it takes neurology to explain this, but the reference to TV is not out of place. It has taken only about half a century–my politically aware lifetime–for our politics to become wholly subsumed into the advertising industry.
Now think a moment about the business model: to the broadcaster, advertising is income, while programming is overhead. The object of the game is to make the spread between the two–profit–as large as possible. The audience is the product, the advertiser is the customer.
Place that alongside the business model of the advertiser: airtime and production are costs; market share, whether measured in dollars or votes, is the goal.
Market share is made cheaper by making the product, viewers, easier to manipulate–that is, by simplifying perceptions, by relying on sentimentality rather than rationality; in short, by “dumbing down.” Programming and advertising both contribute to this process.
(This is why we have the schools we have too: they serve exactly the same purpose, in many of the same ways, but that’s an argument for another day.)
For 35 years I’ve worked in a social service agency, interviewing very average people, most of whom are high school graduates, and a smaller fraction with some “education” beyond that. Fiction? Reality? Most of those I talk to don’t know the difference between a fact and an opinion, between a feeling and a thought, or even between a question and a declarative sentence. What can it possibly mean to such peope to encourage them to “think critically?” Now remember: each of them has exactly the same number of votes you and I do.
This includes the ones who can remember what the pink bits on the map stood for, who would have been interested enough to go see “Out of Africa”, etc etc.
This works just fine for the advertising industry and for its subsidiary, our political system, because it decreases the cost making us all manageable.
Am I the only one who experienced a chill when Mr. Bush admonished us to go out and consume for the good of the country? I don’t think I’m a Puritan or a Luddite, but I think that’s exactly 180 degrees off. And yet I don’t see what we can do about it now that we’ve bought in so far, except take our lumps. It ain’t gonna be pretty.
(Please forgive: this has wandered off topic.)
Mo, you’re killing me! Save the “A” material for the night club act and don’t waste it on us shabby posters…we’re not worthy.
Whatever. I shall end my act today by saying today. America is on it’s knees. George Bush? clueless. Paulson? even worse. Keep your trashy hummers to yourself. How many more Madoff’s do you think will be unearthed. There is probably one on every NYC street. You know what happens to addicts when they run out of their stuff? They go mad.
How Tyranny Came to Zimbabwe
Hey Mo-Dawg, if you’re still lurking and haven’t gone to hear your friday night fatwa about killing infidels; I got a question. What do Zarqawi, Mohammed Atif, Imam Mugniah and the rest of your maddog riff raff have to say in Hell about those “spineless idiots” that lit them up. Scoreboard chump! We may have a lame president, an economy in tatters a busted culture but we’ll still be standing waving Old Glory when the Muslim world sinks into the ash heap of history.
This is islam:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/4178029/Family-of-Afghan-rape-victim-cut-her-open-and-removed-foetus-without-anaesthetic.html
Well, Mo, whatever. It’s been a hoot, thanks for stopping by. It’s a good thing you guys invented the Internet so we could carry on these civil conversations unencumbered by facts and logics. Oh, my bad, you didn’t invent the Internet, did you…come to think of it, what have you guys invented in the last 10 centuries other than a lovely ensemble of explosive dinner wear?
@Thomas Drew. Bingo
@Ammo Guy, Not even that, the Tamil Tigers get the credit for sartorial pyrotechnics.
Lifeofthemind, you caught me trying to slip one by the Belmont Club, but in my defense I was just trying to give Mo something to hang onto, wherever he is.
Mo, great to have you here. So please explain to me why sanctions from a decrept, crumbling former empire would even matter to a sterling economic power like Zimbabwe. And before you count on a harem awaiting you, you might want to consider that the alternative might look like this:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/38673
Hey Mo,
America is about 4 1/2% of the global population leaving Zimbabwe something like 95 1/2% of the world to trade with. If it had anything but disease and eons of tribal hatreds left to trade. No one but followers of the Prophet, (Bees Pee Upon Him) want those and they have plenty of their own.
(I know, I shouldn’t feed the troll.)
Gerry N.
I like that, but I’m changing it to “Please, Pee Upon Him.”
Robert Mugabe is not a hero to children who are dying of cholera, but rather an old man who would rather let children die than retire gracefully from power. It’s not that different from the leadership of People’s Temple. Or for that matter, clerical bullies who would tie plastic keys to the necks of boys and send them out to clear mine fields.
America sends builds robots to clear mine fields. The Soviet Union sent dogs out as suicide bombers against tanks during World War II. But Iran wouldn’t lower itself to sending dogs to clear minefields. No, its clerics told Iranians to have more children while boys were sent to clear the mines.
The words of Iran’s leaders should be taken seriously. They have made their intentions clear. There is not much to discuss with the Iranian government except perhaps whether Americans are better baked or fried. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, Iran WILL use them in a first strike. That’s what the Iranian government says every Friday.
come back ian, all is forgiven!
mohammed:
While I do not favor a return to Colonialism, Mugabe’s treatment of the people of Zimbabwe, his corruption and self-enrichment at their expense, his mismanagement of their economy with its hyper inflation, and his crass indifference to the suffering of them, make a good argument for intervention to overthrow this vile bastard. Perhaps, Mo, you feel a kindred spirit with this sleazy and benighted dictator. But, Mo, Mugabe, like al Qaeda (whom you may also admire given the callous indifference you exhibit in posting balderdash in support of Mugabe (Gee, Lenin’s “useful idiots” are still out there willing to transfer to love to any mass murderer. Is there any miscreant besides Bush who you hold in contempt, Momo?) should be confronted and destroyed. He should be overthrown by black African nations for the sake of humanity.
Mo is no Mo Collins, that’s for sure.
Can’t she find something better to do, like cook couscous? Not that I believe she ever does… it is this moonbat idea about multiculturalism = different cuisines… “I was an Arab tonight, I ate couscous for diner!”.
Let’s clear something up about sanctions.
Sanctions are imposed against a corrupt government when it is in a position to forcibly enrich ITSELF and punish it’s opposition with the benefits of trade. Paradoxically, lifting sanctions would further entrench the corrupt government to the DETRIMENT of the general population.
mohammed: Lifting sanctions would PUNISH the people of Zimbabwe. Is that what you want, you ignoramus?
Mohammed is no longer on this site, please stay on the topic.
Wretchard, thanks! After a while one forgets there was a topic, before the troll dropped its stink.
I dunno, sometimes I think lefties are watching ZimBob with anticipation: “will he be successful in reducing the population from 11 million to 2 million as he set himself to do?”
Zimbabwe was called Abzu in time of Sumer, The World Below. It was a source of iron ore. Kind of odd when you think about it, because Sumer belongs to a bronze age. But then, Sumerians were odd people.
The Zimbabwe iron ore was utilized from the dawn of time. There are mines there that have been dated 60kya. I may quip about the accuracy of dating methods, but even if the margin is 20kya, it is still 40kya. Mined, not striped from surface. Yes, red ochre is an iron ore, but why would someone “mine” it when it is available through shallow pits? An industrial scale mining. Puzzling.
It is an old place. The ruins in Zimbabwe are old too. Probably oldest structures in Africa, bare ancient Egypt and some structures that have been recently discovered further south, where South Africa and Namibia meet. Where was mining, there was trade and where was trade, there was a civilization, even if in a vestigial form.
When first Europeans visited the place, there was no deep mining. The ore was collected from shallow pits, as expected. No one knew anything about the ruins, as if deep amnesia enveloped the place. The mines seem to have been abandoned some 3500ya, that is the dating of the youngest remnants of organic material found in them. About time when Sumer ceased to exist, along with Harrapa and Mohenjo Daro. Dry facts. Yet my mind raises questions.
Why should I care?
I care because the past is a part of my identity. It is frustrating to me how foggy it is. Yes, millennia before I was born. It is still frustrating.
Why I am mentioning it…? Oh, yes, amnesia.
That seems to be a standard feature of humanity. Not only over the long time spans, but with the change of generations as well. I can convey to my daughter how horrible the commie system was. It was not the economy, after all there were not too many people starving to death–at least not in times when I grew up, from mid fifties. That era was already gone. But the schizophrenic nature of the system and the general greyness of life, it was like a slow strangulation lasting a lifetime. I say lifetime, because my life then and after are separated, I lived two lives, it feels that way inside.
My daughter kind of understands, perhaps it is not words I convey, but some non-verbal signals that express the context and depth to my description. But I have no doubts that she would not be able to convey my experience to her children. Beyond the narrative, it will be a story, sterilized of the emotional dimension. Not that it is impossible to transfer someone’s experience, but only few people can.
Hopefully I’ll be still here when my grandchildren would need that dimension with the narrative, else they may become prey to utopian demagogues.
Sometimes I look at the future and get depressed. How is it possible that we are marching as a society into a trap, the same trap my parents walked into mere half a dozen years before I was born? They had the excuse that it was new and they did not know and their parents’ warnings had no traction–what could they know about something they never experienced?
I can scream from the top of my lungs and no one seems to care, or hear. Watching the train wreck in making, the dark age creeping in, almost imperceptibly, but inch by inch. Damn it, I’ll get no pleasure telling “I told you so”! Many are already with a glaze over their eyes, the same glaze that expresses the empty greyness of being, a lot of regular Joes and Janes, and they are as if blind and deaf.
But I just can’t fold my hands get into a recliner and resign. I can’t. If I stay on course, will it be the cure for amnesia, at least for some or just a few? I don’t know.
But there may be one little girl in the future that would listen. One. That is far more than none.
The Third World has been complaining about Cultural Imperialism for years. Several years back some countries even started demanding their cultural artifacts returned to them.
Problem is, that Cultural Imperialism brought antibiotics, modern farming methods, electricity, real sanitation, instant communications, etc. And the West’s Cultural Artifacts include those things. And all those things came from a Western way of thought.
So if they want to trade back – as Mugabe has effectively decided to do – they better expect the results.
@ 39. RWE
Cultural imperialism is an invention of marxist and neomarxists. They intorduced the concept on their universities to young, impressionable African (or Asian) students. It meant, of course, the WESTERN imperialism. The marxist imperialism did not count, in fact, you never heard these two terms together. It is the same sleigh of hand when someone says only white people can be racist.
Yes, if they don’t want our (imperialistic) culture, they should then refrain from accepting any part of it.
I wish that laptop Intel chips (made in Israel) had some voice recognition built in and if there was a sound in the vicinity that would match “Death to Israel” or “Death to America” patterns, the chip would self-destruct.
One could call Mugabe’s indifference to his nation’s epidemic “genocide,” or “ethnic cleansing.”
But, since Mugabe’s skin color is the same as his victims, the globe’s progressive “human rights” organizations won’t use these words. Heck, I remember how difficult it was for our “first black President,” Bill Clinton, to utter those words <ivis Rwanda’s
genocidecommunity organizing.In this, the Left’s human rights groups resemble easily-confused drug-sniffing dogs. Just toss a little ground pepper in front of them and they get confused, sit on their haunches and wag their tails.
TwoByFour: Yes, that is right. The commies did not went their intended victims to adopt philosophies that would enable them to resist.
But I am sure that you also realize that the Cultural Imperialism excuse for bad behavior is applied in ghettos here in the U.S., with equally disaterous results. No, make that even more disasterous results, since it affects people besides them.
There is a novel out in which the people in Africa hijack ships, sail to Western ports, and demand to be let in to escape their horrible circumstances. Neil Boortz was impressed by this and has asked “What would we do if that really happened?” The flaw in the concept is that if anyone in Africa had the gumption, energy, and competence to hijack a bunch of ships and sail across the ocean they would not have to go anywhere to escape their circumstances.
I read that 40 years ago 25% of all the poor people in the world lived in Africa. After decades of Western aid amounting to billions and billions of dollars every year, now over 50% of all the poor people in the world live in Africa.
What do New York’s Museum of Modem Art, Queen Elizabeth II, the Rockefellers and the Rothschilds have in common ? They all own remarkable semi-abstract sculptures carved by the Shona, Zimbabwe’s largest tribe. Picasso was an admirer of early Shona sculpture; now evidence is surfacing that he was influenced by it, too
http://karaart.com/collections/shona/index.html
Delusions again. Whether you accept it or not Zimbabwe’s problems are as a result of sanctions. Led by the UK and the US. Those farms are gone they are never going to come back. Accept it. And to say that the third world should some how be grateful for western medicine and technology shows your ignorances. The these are not western medicine per se, progress and technology passes from one set of people to the other over time. The west is holding it now, but it is just a matter of time before they lose it. From Byzantine to Persians to Egyptians to Mongols to Greeks to Romans, it shall pass on.
Funny that, mohammed. You have been deceived. As far as I know there are no willing virgins in Phlegethon, the river of boiling blood reserved for the violent in Hell. Or in the Wood of the Suicides.
It doesn’t really matter. Fairly soon, in historical terms, many many millions of your co-religionists are going to be reading an inscription:
THROUGH ME YOU PASS INTO THE CITY OF WOE:
THROUGH ME YOU PASS INTO ETERNAL PAIN:
THROUGH ME AMONG THE PEOPLE LOST FOR AYE.
JUSTICE THE FOUNDER OF MY FABRIC MOV’D:
TO REAR ME WAS THE TASK OF POWER DIVINE,
SUPREMEST WISDOM, AND PRIMEVAL LOVE.
BEFORE ME THINGS CREATE WERE NONE, SAVE THINGS
ETERNAL, AND ETERNAL I ENDURE.
ALL HOPE ABANDON YE WHO ENTER HERE.
Have fun with the demons.
Those farms are gone they are never going to come back. Accept it.
We have. There are no farmers left in Zimbabwe worth a damn, that’s why the people are so thin. To run a farm you actually got to–work. And–know what the hell you are doing. And–want to do it.
Fellahenism, mo, is what you are looking at. Hunter/gathering. Digging roots. Burning camel dung.
Good heavens! I like Japanese manga, British comedy, Chinese philosophy, French music, German pastries, and Mexican soap operas. I must be a victim of cultural imperialism.
Seriously, Zimbabwe is a rerun of Ukraine, Uganda, and Cambodia. Once you get rid of professionals who are vital to running an economy, the work of these professionals is no longer available for the common good. Just as the exodus of Jews and Christians from Muslim lands undermines Muslim scientific progress, the exodus of white farmers undermines Zimbabwe’s agricultural production.
In previous eras, enlightened kings and emperors would promote the immigration of skilled artisans to their lands. Hence, the Ottoman Empire welcomed Spain’s Jews and Catherine the Great welcomed German farmers into the Ukraine. One of the unfortunate side effects of unalloyed democracy is to create incentives for people to get rid of “market dominant minorities”, the kind of people who are both unpopular and vital to the smooth running of the local economy.
Elephant dung, as the case may be.
you cannot even hold a debate. stopping me from posting.
We have seen you skilled geniuses at work. Just look at the state of your economy. The world will welcome the decline and waning of American influence that is surely coming. The government is trying to print money, did they learn that from Mugabe? Trying to devalue your currency to reduce the weight of your debt may work short term but your currencies will loose long term.
Why is it OK for Teresita and her various personalities to parachute in frequently and derail the thread, but when a poor little equally deranged Islamist tries the same sort of dithering America-hatred, he is shut down by management?
That’s got to be sexism, racism, cultural imperialism or all of the above.
Strange thing about people with MPD (Multiple Personality Disorder) is that they frequently turn out to have no personality at all. Is this a possible security clearance issue?
To me, it’s a failure – abject – of profiling.
Or maybe just bipolar disorder with only one pole.
Our troller has a reasonable grasp of economics yet he persists in believing that Zimbabwe’s woes come from the stopping of trade with the US and England rather than from Zimbabwe’s headlong plunge from the 20th century into savagery.
What I meant to say next was that any nation must be either to provide the structures needed for the people to provide for all they require, or to participate in international commerce and by the division of labor to produce goods that are traded to other nations for all to profit. Either of those paths allows the people to live, and that is the first requirement of a nation, that its people survive. Mugabe has abdicated this requirement and endeavored to kill off his tribes’ rivals. For a nation to exist as a mendicant begging for alms from other nations is not worthy of a self-respecting nation. Zimbabwe, by rejecting modern methods of agriculture and embracing communism, tyranny, and savagery, has chosen its path. This path has lost the ability to prevent and treat cholera. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with the USA or UK, no matter what our troll says.
Just when I was getting ready to apologize to Wretchard for help making hash of this read, Mo returns for an encore…without any prior applause! What chutzpah! Oops, my bad again…some posters are skittish about yiddish. Oh well…BTW Mo, what color is the sky in your world?
@Beaglescout,
Mugabe and the Philistines have both chosen a third path. They believe that you can reject both creative law abiding productivity and peaceful commerce. The third path is to kill those who attempt such pursuits and then demand that your victims or their kin provide charity. This could be called the Chutzpah theory of development. They are not engaging in a campaign of conquest to validate the success of their superior tactics, technology or organization. That would be understandable on some level and presupposes a prior period of creativity as in option #1. Charitably it could be thought that Islam had such a phase 1400 years ago. The brazenness of the current thugs is reminiscent of the propaganda of the Ants in The Once and Future King. “When we are so numerous and starving we have a right to take the Others seeds and water so that we can become even more numerous and starving.”
Mohammdan, you are full of it, like the ‘political activists’ I met in Zimbabwe.
Your claim that the farmers got their land by colonisation is false. In the 1980s and 1990s most of them BOUGHT the farms from previous owners, receiving a ‘Certificate of no interest’ from the Government that showed they did not want the land for redistribution or communal farming.
I remember the pandering self-interest of rhetoric from the suited Mercedes drivers to the President himself, blaiming the ‘colonial powers’ and creating a mythology of deprivation. The would give supporters land, and supporters would beg “Give us inputs’. If a man has to beg for seed, he is not a a farmer but a slave. People like you, mohammed, encourage the thinking that keep those people slaves.