Can someone please invade Zimbabwe?

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Ted, do you know of the concept of selective quoting?

Quit whining.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ted Striker


This is all well and good, (though questionable) but it's still a drop in a river compared with the effects of hundreds of years of direct European rule. Those places were all messed up in the first place when they were abondoned by their European overlords.

If you consider parts of it to be questionable, post your contradictory evidence. Put up or shut up. And while you're at it, explain how desertification is the fault of the colonial powers. I wasn't aware they had the ability to control thousands of years of changing weather patterns.

Gosh, Ted, it’s always fun replying to your posts. In this instance, my fun derives both from your poor arithmetic and your shaky grasp of history.

You say Europeans had control of the continent for ‘hundreds of years.’ How many hundreds would you say? Two hundred ? Three hundred ? Four hundred ? I ask, because you may not recall, but the ‘Scramble for Africa’ did not begin until the latter part of the 19th century. Great Britain occupied The Gambia in 1816
and The Gold Coast/Ghana in 1821. At that time, the majority of Africa was ruled by local, indigenous rulers, with the exception of the Ottoman Turks in the north of Africa, and Arab sultanates in East Africa.
Ghana achieved independence in 1957. Now if you deduct 1821 from 1957 you get a grand total of 136 years. Not hundreds at all, you’ll notice. And that’s one of Great Britain’s first colonies in Africa. How about Nigeria? Occupied in 1861. How about Kenya? 1890. Uganda? 1894. Swaziland? 1906. Perhaps you came by your figure of ‘hundreds of years’ by adding up all the years that various individual countries were colonies together. Who knows ?

France’s african colonies were acquired as late as the 1870s, and in the case of Morocco, not until 1912.
Still, it’s always fun seeing how little you know of world history outside the United States.

As for your reference to ‘C.I.A. bogeymen’- if only they were simply figures used to scare children. Post-colonial Africa might have been a more secure place to live. Unfortunately, as we’ve seen, through direct C.I.A. intervention in Angola and Ghana and Zaire and elsewhere, this was not the case. Thanks to the activities of the American secret service and America’s proxies, racist Rhodesia (and by the way- saying that Ian Smith’s Rhodesia was a British creation is as logical as saying post 1776 America was a British creation. Rhodesia declared U.D.I. in 1965- Great Britain and the U.N. instituted sanctions, and America gleefully broke them, as it did in South Africa. Great job, U.S.) and apartheid South Africa, the whole of southern Africa was impoverished and destabilised- from direct military intervention in Mozambique and Angola by South Africa, to terrorist attacks and assassinations in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Lesotho, Angola, Namibia, and Swaziland.

Instead of concentrating on the economy and trade, infrastructure, health care, and literacy, more and more money had to be spent on bush wars, fighting rebel incursions, repairing the damage done by the likes of Unita and Renamo and the South African secret service and its paramilitary forces. At the same time the U.S. was ‘constructively engaging’ South Africa, South Africa was assassinating the likes of Dulcie September in France and Ruth First in Mozambique. It was also killing more people in the Front Line states than in South Africa- quite an achievement given the apartheid regime’s record against its own people. And yet the U.S. chose to bomb Libya on more tenuous evidence and because of a much smaller death toll. Why wasn’t Nicaragua ‘constructively engaged’? Or Cuba? After all, Nicaragua hadn’t occupied a neighbouring territory as South Africa had with Namibia. And Cuba wasn’t launching repeated terrorist attacks on Mexico, Honduras, Jamaica and Costa Rica.

Still- carry on pretending that the U.S. hasn't been like King Midas in reverse in Africa- every country it touched turning into a disaster area.

[Ted Striker]

Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Go to the root of the problem. Everything after that is just noise.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Sikander


Washington, which quite frankly didn't care very much about this corner of the world, save that its supplies of strategic metals etc. from South Africa remained unharmed by Soviet clients in neighboring states.

AFAIK the U.S. never supplied arms to RENAMO (there are plenty of pictures of these guys around, and I have never seen them with any other than South Africa / Rhodesian kit or captured Soviet stuff.

I think this is as close to agreement as you and I are going to get on this issue.

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there. How about this:

"During the raid, a large quantity of weapons and documents were captured. The documents confirmed the fact that Renamo was receiving equipment and arms from South Africa, from the United States of America, and from Portugal. It was also revealed that Renamo was training some Zimbabweans who called themselves the Zimbabwe Resistance Army. Of the arms captured at Cassa Banana, most were of Eastern Block origin. The heavy field guns had all been captured from the FAM. It appears as if the South African forces on whom Renamo relied for weapons, were simply passing on to Renamo the arms they were capturing from Angola. "

http://ccrweb.ccr.uct.ac.za/defencedigest/defdigest03.html

and this:

"The opposition Resistencia Nacional Mozambicana (Renamo) received weapons from Rhodesia and later from South Africa. Kenya provided ammunition in the late 1980s, and Portuguese, German, American and Gulf sources also provided weaponry. Much of Renamo's weaponry consisted of re-circulated Chinese and Russian light weapons. Renamo also relied heavily in the last years of the war on weapons captured from government forces.

http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Papers/BP25.htm"

and for the more clandestine routes of official and unofficial U.S. support:

“The United States is only one of the distant governments that wink at the arms traffic, particularly if it serves their own geopolitical games or balances out the political playing field. U.S. officials call the pursuit of the military agenda the "African solution to African problems."
Traffickers give foreign governments plausible deniability. Neither France nor the United States wants to be caught red-handed providing direct military aid to client regimes or allies like Burundi, who have committed egregious human rights abuses, or to countries known to have invaded their neighbors, like Uganda and Rwanda.
But drawing the line between covert operations and black marketeering can be tricky. U.S. law enforcement officials were told to look the other way when their investigation of arms networks to the Great Lakes genocidaires overlapped with the activities of "protected" suppliers of the U.S.-sponsored, predominantly Christian-oriented Sudanese People's Liberation Army, which is fighting against the Islamic regime in Khartoum.
The culpability of foreign governments is threefold: they may directly authorize the covert supply of weapons and ammunition or their trans-shipment across their borders (acts of commission); they may turn a blind eye to their nationals who are engaged in illegal arms smuggling, military training, and mercenary activity (acts of omission); or they may be lax in striking against illegality and corruption (neglect). In the Great Lakes region, not a single foreign gunrunner that I have come across has been imprisoned for violating international or local laws, international humanitarian law, arms embargoes, or regional sanctions.

A U.S.-sponsored "evangelical missionary couple" flew military guns supplied by right-wing Americans and South Africans to the "anti-Communist" RENAMO rebels in Mozambique as late as 1994. I recently bumped into them in the Burundian capital of Bujumbura where, under cover of running a Christian medical clinic, they were giving military assistance to their ostensible religious believers. The sponsoring organization receives funds from the U.S. government development agency, USAID.”

Kathi Austin is a visiting scholar at the Center for African Studies at Stanford University. She is a consultant to the International Crisis Group in Brussels and other human rights organizations.

Ah yes, USAID- like those ubiquitous ‘Soviet trade missions’ in Europe and Africa and Asia, as much to do with aid as intelligence.

“South Africa also played an unsavoury part in this war, supported every step of the way by the U.S. South Africa’s extreme militarism went hand in hand with its white supremacy and overall strategy of destabilization in the southern end of the continent. South Africa backed the contra war in Mozambique that killed or maimed 250,000 and created over one million refugees. South Africa subverted independence in Namibia with its counterinsurgency war. The apartheid military had 120,000 troops stationed in Namibia in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1975, South Africa intervened in Angola with the support of the CIA. The U.S. had traditionally supported South Africa, in large part due to Kissinger’s renowned racist “Tar Baby” policy (NSSM39). “Tar Baby” articulated the U.S. position in Africa: Black Nationalist movements were an unsuitable alternative to continued colonial rule. “Tar Baby” was the impetus behind Washington’s million-dollar sales of military aircraft to the South African government in Pretoria. The South African military was notorious for its brutality—terrorists in every sense of the word. Support from the U.S. gave South Africa’s apartheid terrorists legitimacy. “

Andrew Hartman, ‘The Politicization of Terror’ Z magazine.

Let's not pretend that from the days of Kissinger and Nixon's realpolitik to Reagan's 'constructive engagement' that the U.S. had no interest in southern Africa and the black-ruled front line states in the SADDC- because it simply isn't true. The C.I.A. had a practice of recycling or reusing Soviet bloc and Chinese weaponry in Central America too- they supplied the FMLN with Soviet bloc weapons in order to smear them with a plausible Cuban/Russian connection. Supplies to Renamo also came through some other intriguing conduits- Malawi's autocratic regime, run by one of the few African leaders to maintain diplomatic contact with Israel, Kenya (likewise) Saudi Arabia and Israel. Of course, if caught, the traffickers and the arms could then be said to have come from anywhere else other than the United States- which whilst ostensibly publicly supporting the Nkomati accord was covertly helping South Africa subvert it. Same as in Central America with the Esquipulas and Arias accords. Plus ca change...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Their ancestors showed up in the late 19th-early 20th century with guns and took it, then created a government that allowed them to keep it. In 1979, after many years of civil war, the Blacks finally defeated the white minority government, and in the peace treaty, Great Britain and the US both pledged to pay Zimbabwe money to help them carry out a land re-distribution program, then renegged.

[Ted Striker]

Their ancestors showed up in the late 19th-early 20th century with guns and took it

Enough said.

How's that for selective quoting.

[Drake Tungsten]

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there.

Jesus, what a condescending *******...

[Mr. President]

I'm surprised no-one's posted a link to americanstateterrorism.com . . .

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
Answer me this -- how in the hell did Zimbabwe get a white minority of farmers owning all the land in the first place?

Go to the root of the problem. Everything after that is just noise.

Oh, gee, ted, I don't know- the same way the United States did? By the way- corporate landholders account for large tracts of the land occupied by tobacco farms in Zimbabwe. Guess which country they come from?

Remilitarizing Africa for Corporate Profit

By John E. Peck

"Total U.S. foreign spending in sub-Saharan Africa under Clinton/Gore has dwindled to a paltry $700 million in 1999—less than $3 per U.S. citizen per year—and a drastic decline from the Reagan/Bush high of $1.8 billion in 1985. During the Cold War (1959-1989), the Pentagon spent in excess of $1.5 billion on direct arms transfers and covert military activities in sub-Saharan Africa alone, supporting brutal dictatorships in Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Zaire, Somalia, and Liberia, as well as pro-apartheid rebels in Angola and Mozambique. Yet, since the demise of the “Communist threat,” the U.S. has continued this sordid trend of bankrolling belligerence in Africa earmarking $227 million for arms sales and training programs between 1991 and 1998, according to a recent World Policy Institute report, “Deadly Legacy.” Between 1991 and 1995, over 3,400 African soldiers received U.S. training, 70 percent of which hailed from dictatorships and other countries in turmoil. Under International Military Education Training (IMET), the U.S. spent $5.8 million training 400 African officers in 1998 alone. Thanks to the Pentagon’s newer Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) program, 34 out of the 53 countries on the continent now boast U.S. military “graduates,” including 8 of the 9 nations behind both sides of the civil war still raging across Congo. Large quantities of small arms are also being dumped in Africa under Section 516 of the 1961 Foreign Assistance Act as Excess Defense Articles (EDA) transfers. Yet, when it came to paying for UN and Organization of African Unity (OAU) peacekeeping operations in Congo to implement the Lusaka Peace Accord, the White House had only $2 million to spare.

Following the example of post-apartheid house cleaning, the U.S. should also convene its own “Truth Commission” to expose and judge Washington policymakers, hell bent to “win” the Cold War, who inflicted so much death and misery on Africa. It’s hard to imagine a worse case of a self-declared democratic superpower shirking its historic obligation to an entire continent and its people. Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) has found one sobering maxim from his review of U.S.-Africa policy, which he shared with Congress back in July 1998, “The first rule should be that the U.S. does not give any kind of military assistance whatever to governments that murder their own people.”

John E. Peck is a graduate student at UW-Madison, who has visited Africa many times in the last decade and is also a member of the Association of Concerned African Scholars.

Yeah, all those dictators, arms traffickers, and gem smugglers are just noise. Very expensive noise, in terms of the damage to people and countries and Africa's future. But go ahead, ted, continue to salve your conscience by imagining that somehow the U.S. has been a disinterested bystander in the wreckage of post-colonial African hopes. Just what Africa needs- more guns and more soldiers. Perhaps they're getting the same kind of training those soldiers responsible for atrocities in Central and South America received at the School of the Americas. Kagame's R.P.F. would seem to indicate this- Kagame having received training and support from the U.S.

Ghana at independence had over 1 billion dollars in the bank- the greatest sum in black Africa. After the C.I.A. sponsored coup in 1964, and several more coups following that, the U.S. supported leader, Jerry Rawlings, said in the late 1980s, that Ghana would need a further twenty to thirty years of unrestricted growth simply to match the pre-independence living standards. You go, U.S., you go...

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Ted Striker


Enough said.

How's that for selective quoting.

If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'm surprised no-one's posted a link to americanstateterrorism.com . . .

That's a scary site.

[Drake Tungsten]

If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

Do the black children in Zimbabwe have the right to eat? Mugabe's idiotic reforms took that away...

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

Well, Soldier of Fortune not being required reading at university, I never had the chance to scan the doubtless well-researched articles in there.

Jesus, what a condescending *******...

Oh, Drake, you're such a sweet-talker. I have actually read some copies of Soldier of Fortune, and outside the realms of forensic psychiatric literature and biographies of Hitler and Stalin, a better assortment of paranoid fantasists you couldn't hope to meet.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara


If you steal something, your children have no right to it.

Well duh.

I don't know what point you're trying to make.

[Ted Striker]

Oh, and by the way,

The British Government formally granted independence to Zimbabwe on April 18, 1980.

Here's a nice link about the history of Zimbabwe for all you ignorant (molly) people:

http://www.rhodesian-chronicle.co.uk/rhodesias_history.htm