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Zimbabwe thread
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| KLINGKLANG77 |
all these threads of iraq, hillary, etc.
anyone here concerned aboutt Afrika's well being...
i mean all those tribal wars....and Zimbabwe about ready to be free from Mugabe (spelling is sooo off!). all in due time....
any thoughts? |
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| Dj_Irish |
Great topic!
There's a lot of issues in Africa right now that seems to be more or less ignored by media and the internation political discussion. I for one need to read up on it before articualting any specific comments about the issues though. :) |
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| rizen |
i saw a bbc story on this last week :(
all i have to say is, Thank you france, uk and other euro countries who are stepping in. Where is the US in all this? no where, no oil there, and im sure many americans would give up thier life and childrens life to save some "negros"... cause lets face it we are racist :(
only way we'll do something there is if theres another bush tall tale about WMDs/terrosim that involves zimbabwe |
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| Project T |
| the sooner mugabe is gone the better! |
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| DrUg_Tit0 |
| quote: | anyone here concerned aboutt Afrika's well being...
i mean all those tribal wars....and Zimbabwe about ready to be free from Mugabe (spelling is sooo off!). all in due time....
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I didn't know Mugabe is about to leave. Is it because of the elections or some other reason?
| quote: | Originally posted by rizen
i saw a bbc story on this last week :(
all i have to say is, Thank you france, uk and other euro countries who are stepping in. Where is the US in all this? no where, no oil there, and im sure many americans would give up thier life and childrens life to save some "negros"... cause lets face it we are racist :(
only way we'll do something there is if theres another bush tall tale about WMDs/terrosim that involves zimbabwe |
Africa always used to be in the european zone of interest, so america never intervened much there. |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
Africa always used to be in the european zone of interest, so america never intervened much there. |
There is still a lot of American resentment against sending peace-keeping troops to Africa following the debacle at Somalia.
At any rate how are the Europeans sending peace keepers to Zimbabwe? The only way the Europeans are interfering is that they have instituted sanctions against Zimbabwe as has the United States. You must be thinking of the DR Congo of which it historically used to be a French colony. At any rate the US has promised material support but declined inserting peace keepers which is probably most appropriate in this atmosphere of resentment against American forces abroad.
Besides don't you guys always complain about the US being the police man of the world? I distinctly remember that attitude following Kosovo. |
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| Galapidate |
| Finally something different from the Arab/Israeli conflict or the war on terror. What has been going on lately? |
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| MisterOpus1 |
Why should we talk about this Mugabe character? I haven't hardly seen anything in the news about him. Who is he? And where's Zimbabwhat? Is that anything to do with that Congo-Jongo crap that pops up here and there?
Say, that Mugabe guy wouldn't happen to be the guy whom the U.S. helped rise to power was he? He wouldn't happen to be the one who plundered his own countries riches in diamonds, gold, etc. to a cool estimate of 4.5 billion or so was he? That Congo place doesn't happen to be the place where there's been an estimated 3.3 million people killed due to warfare, starvation and famine now is it? This wouldn't happen to be the same place where there is continual rape of women, torture, and where they could off limbs of boys so they will not fight in the future now is it?
Because I'm not interested in that. I want to know what's going on in Iraq. I want to know if Saddam really is dead. I want to know where Saddam planted all his stinkin' weapons, especially those ones which could be deployed within 45 min.! I want to know where his useless biol. weapons are that have a shelf life of 10 years, and are likely useless today. And finally, when are we going to bomb the crap out of Iran? Who do they think they are, trying to run a democracy over there and stuff? Those idiots! Didn't they learn the first lesson we taught them back in the 60's, when our CIA successfully helped overthrow their successful democracy and create a ruthless dictatorship that became a haven for terrorism for the next 3 decades?
So let's keep ourselves focused on the REAL issues at steak here. We've got a war to win, and a world to conquer. Let those stupid Africans kill themselves - we'll conquer them later once they're almost all dead. |
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| KLINGKLANG77 |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
I didn't know Mugabe is about to leave. Is it because of the elections or some other reason?
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i am sorry i should have rephrased that. he is meeting strong opposition in his country. at one point it looked like he was going to retire, now he says no....can never understand
anyways some reading for you all:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/3003987.stm
check the www.bbc.co.uk or www.suntimes.co.za for good news stories
and their gov't website, which i find amusing and full of propaganda.
zanu pf |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Say, that Mugabe guy wouldn't happen to be the guy whom the U.S. helped rise to power was he? |
Huh?
| quote: |
From peasant to president
Robert Gabrial Mugabe began life as a cowherd but went on to become prime minister and, later, president of Zimbabwe. Derek Brown examines the African leader's rise to power and the increasingly unpopular measures he has employed to cling to it
Derek Brown
Guardian Unlimited
Monday April 3, 2000
Robert Mugabe has ruled Zimbabwe for twenty years, taking it from modest prosperity to the brink of economic meltdown. He came to power after the old white-rule regime collapsed, and although he has preached national reconciliation, the country remains deeply divided on ethnic lines - not just between whites and blacks, but between the majority Shona people and the powerful Ndebele and other minority groups.
Throughout his rise to power and since, Mugabe has radiated strength and steely determination. Born on February 21, 1924, he was raised in the north of what was Southern Rhodesia, on a mission settlement in Mashonaland. There he received a Jesuit education, and worked as a cowherd before qualifying as a primary school teacher. Later, he studied at Fort Hare university in South Africa, gaining a BA degree in 1951 followed be a spell of teaching in West Africa, where he acquired a passionate interest in Marxist theory.
In 1960, the year British prime minister Harold Macmillan spoke of the "wind of change" blowing through Africa, Mugabe entered politics, joining the National Democratic Party headed by veteran independence campaigner Joshua Nkomo.
The NDP was banned, and subsequently replaced by the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). But soon Mugabe split with Nkomo, and set up his own Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Both parties were quickly banned by the white-rule government.
Mugabe and Nkomo were arrested shortly before Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith declared unilateral independence from Britain in 1965. Mugabe used his ten years behind bars to study law. By the time he was released in 1974, ZAPU and ZANU had formed a joint guerrilla army, the Patriotic Front, to fight the illegal Smith regime.
The war was vicious and prolonged. In 1980 Rhodesia briefly reverted to British colonial rule and elections were held for the first time with universal suffrage. Many British officials believed that Nkomo, the father of the freedom struggle, would be rewarded by the liberated voters. But Nkomo's power base was in the south, in Ndebeland. Mugabe had the support of the much larger Shona people, and won a landslide victory.
He has ruled ever since, as prime minister and (since 1987) as president. In the beginning, he formed an all-party government, but as early as 1982 he fell out with Nkomo and sacked him from the cabinet. The increasingly autocratic Mugabe has browbeaten, dismissed and intimidated his rivals, to the extent that in the presidential election of 1996, none dared oppose him.
Though the press has remained free, there have also been barely-veiled attempts to stifle criticism of the ZANU-PF ruling party. Radio and television are government controlled, and slavishly pro-Mugabe.
In recent years there has been a rising tide of protest against the authoritarianism and corruption of the regime. Discontent has been fuelled by the parlous state of the economy, where inflation rages and more than half the workforce is unemployed. To add to the nation's misery, an estimated 250,000 people were left homeless by disastrous floods in February and March.
The flashpoint issue now is Mugabe's support for the seizure of white-owned farms by landless peasants - his own kind. Last month the voters of Zimbabwe delivered a stinging rebuke to their president, and voted against the land seizures. Mugabe now says he will go ahead anyway. He has also postponed elections due this spring.
Even more inexplicably, Mugabe has committed a large part of the Zimbabwean army to the support of the Congolese president, Laurent Kabila. The operation is costing £1m a day, and is wildly unpopular. But the peasant boy who became president apparently no longer cares for popularity. He is interested only in clinging on to power.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/A...3981683,00.html
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Is there something I'm missing? I would never expect the US to support him especially at that time period when he was a self-acclaimed marxist. If anything I'm finding articles where the US is trying to kill him or remove him.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/a.../muga-a28.shtml
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/207049.htm
And the US didn't overthrow anybody in Iran in the 60's ... are you referring to Mossadeq in 1953? Confused! |
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| MisterOpus1 |
Yes, I was referring to Mossadeq in '53. Thanks for the correction.
As for my earlier comment, I was referring to the overthrow of Lumumba in 1961 from the Belgians with the aid of C.I.A. Here's a few points:
1. In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo
-detailed outline of the history of the Congo, including the C.I.A. overt operation to overthrow Lumumbu's regime.
2. | quote: | In 1960, the Congo achieved independence after almost a century of brutal Belgian colonial rule. Soon after, Patrice Lumumba, a pan-africanist who favored returning his country’s natural resources to its people, was elected prime minister.
Barely a week after independence, the Congolese army revolted. A few days later, Moise Tshombe, leader of Confederation des Association du Katanga (CONAKAT), declared independence for the mineral-rich province in the south. Tshombe called on Belgium to ““re-establish public order and security and contribute its technical, financial and military aid” - opening the door for the colonial power to return.
On January 17, 1961, Belgian soldiers, with the aid of the CIA, executed Lumumba and several of his ministers. New documents have revealed the order to kill came from Eisenhower himself. According to one account, “their bodies were hacked into pieces and dissolved in acid. And when the executioners ran out of acid, they burnt the remains.”
The Congo was thrown into chaos, as Mobutu Sese Seko, a former ally of Lumumba, took power in 1965, again with the help of the CIA.
Mobutu would become one of the world's most corrupt dictators. Ruling for more than three decades, he brought in billions of dollars of U.S. aid despite a dismal human rights record. He would also hand out the country’s vast mineral rights to foreign companies as he amassed a personal fortune that some say totaled in the billions of dollars.
Today, with Mobutu and his successor Laurent Kabila both gone, the Congo is once again wrecked by war – and foreign companies, like the Belgian colonialists before them, are once again rushing to extract the country’s resources with little regard for the toll its taking on the people.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/newswire/36.html%22target=
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3. | quote: | 1960 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Congo’s first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But the Belgians don’t quite leave. They keep their hands on the vast mineral wealth in the Katanga province, where the Americans also have a piece of the action. Lumumba is defiant, calling for the Congo’s economic and political liberation. In other words, he is doomed. In January 1961, he is assassinated with help from the CIA, under orders from Eisenhower himself. His body is chopped up into little pieces and burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Even his CIA handlers are amazed at his cruelty. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d’Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc358.html
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4. A little bit on Jimmy Carter:
| quote: | When the people of the African country then known as Zaire rebelled against their brutal and corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Carter ordered the U.S. Air Force to fly in Moroccan troops to help crush the popular uprising and save the regime.
http://www.guerrillanews.com/human_rights/doc782.html
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From Scott Campbell who directs the Congo office of the International Human Rights Law Group:
5. | quote: | In fact, there's a long history of destructive policy in Congo. Shortly after independence in 1960, the U.S. was actively seeking out the assassination of Congo's first prime minister. Someone else beat us to it, but from 1960 onward the U.S. used Congo as a pawn in the Cold War. We pumped in a lot of aid for economic development and had a lot of business interests here. But neither the aid nor the investment did anything to benefit the Congolese people. It was done under the bloody dictatorship of Mobutu, and we never put conditions on our support, provided that he serve our purposes during the Cold War. There's a lot of resentment in the Congo from that.
http://www.tompaine.com/feature2.cfm/ID/4946
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My point was in regards to our government aiding or being deliberately involved in putting evil dictators in power, only to have egg thrown in their faces for their misdeeds by these dictators later.
BTW, anyone know about Pat Robertson's dealings and minings in the Congo? Jeez, that's some real juicy info there! |
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| occrider |
| quote: | Originally posted by MisterOpus1
Yes, I was referring to Mossadeq in '53. Thanks for the correction.
As for my earlier comment, I was referring to the overthrow of Lumumba in 1961 from the Belgians with the aid of C.I.A.
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Ah ok so it's not mugabe you are talking about.
At any rate I read a while back about Ike's attempt to eliminate Lumumba. Although the findings were less conclusive then your source indicates:
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Did Ike Authorize a Murder?
Memo Says Eisenhower Wanted Congolese Premier Dead
By George Lardner Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, August 8, 2000; Page A23
As president, Dwight Eisenhower laid down strict rules for reports on meetings of the National Security Council: no direct quotations.
A memo concerning an Aug. 18, 1960, meeting about the Congo's troublesome first premier, Patrice Lumumba, made public this week at the National Archives after years of gathering dust, suggests the wisdom of the rule--at least as far as Ike was concerned.
The official note taker at that meeting, Robert H. Johnson, vividly recalled Eisenhower turning to CIA Director Allen Dulles "in the full hearing of all those in attendance and saying something to the effect that Lumumba should be eliminated."
After that, "according to Mr. Johnson, there was a stunned silence for about 15 seconds and the meeting continued."
Johnson made the statements in a conversation with the director of the select Senate intelligence committee on June 10, 1975, in the midst of its investigation of U.S. assassination plots against foreign leaders. However, Johnson was a bit more circumspect when he was called before the committee on June 18.
At the hearing, he recalled Eisenhower as saying "something--I can no longer recall the words--that came across to me as an order for the assassination of Lumumba, who was then at the center of political conflict and controversy in the Congo."
The Senate committee, headed by the late Frank Church (D-Idaho), finally decided there was "a reasonable inference" that Eisenhower had authorized Lumumba's assassination, but stopped short of a firm finding. The CIA acted as though the president had given the go-ahead, sending one of its scientists to the Congo in September 1960 with a vial of deadly poison that could be injected into something Lumumba might eat.
"In high quarters here, it is the clear-cut conclusion that if [Lumumba] continues to hold high office, the inevitable result will at best be chaos and at worst pave the way to Communist takeover. . . . His removal must be an urgent and prime objective," Dulles cabled the CIA station chief in the Congo on Aug. 26, 1960.
The poison, however, was never used, and CIA operatives were unable to get to Lumumba before he was eventually captured by Congolese rivals and killed on Jan. 17, 1961. The Church committee concluded cautiously that "it does not appear from the evidence that the United States was in any way involved in the killing."
Fresh questions about that have arisen recently in Belgium, the Congo's old colonial master, where a parliamentary inquiry was started in May into the Belgian government's possible involvement in the 35-year-old Lumumba's murder. (The Congo was known later for many years as Zaire.)
The investigation was prompted by a book published in Belgium last year that says the Brussels government engineered Lumumba's capture and execution and even helped dispose of the body. It was cut up with a hacksaw and dissolved in sulfuric acid, according to a Belgian police commissioner who went on Belgian TV last year, displaying a bullet and two of what he said were Lumumba's teeth.
Whether Washington was involved in or aware of the final scheme remains unclear.
NSC note taker Johnson's Senate testimony on June 18, 1975, was set down and explored at length--along with the differing recollections of other officials present at the 1960 NSC meeting--in the Church committee's 1975 report on assassination plots. But what he said in his June 10 interview remained secret for 25 years. The only reference to it was an ambiguous footnote stating that "one NSC staff member . . . believed that he witnessed a presidential order to assassinate Lumumba."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/w...7¬Found=true
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I would question the objectivity and bias of a news source called geurillanews :).
| quote: |
My point was in regards to our government aiding or being deliberately involved in putting evil dictators in power, only to have egg thrown in their faces for their misdeeds by these dictators later.
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Yes the CIA did much in the past to set up dictators. However, I'm not sure if I have a complete grasp of the global situation to really criticize cold war politics. Keep in mind the Soviets were setting up dictators in Eastern Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa in order to expand the Soviet sphere of influence. The American response to avoid global isolation was to establish dictatorships of its own when necessary. Nobody really complained at the time because the mentality was that the only way to fight fire was with fire. It is only now, when security has been achieved and the cold war is over, that people come out to criticize the actions done to win the cold war. I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon just yet. Should we have done nothing in Korea, Vietnam, the middle east, etc. I'm not sure ... I'm just glad that in the end we avoided total war with the Soviet Union.
What's important now is that the US wash free all of its affiliations with these regimes and begin a process of removing them from power. |
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