ZIMBABWE

Isolation Nation

Mugabe forced out his foe. What comes next won't be pretty.

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  • Posted By: paulte @ 06/23/2008 3:27:04 PM

    Mugabe shows black rule at its worst. A true horror show! Who would believe that this country was a granary and a tourist attraction when the whites were in power. American whites better wake up to the reality of Obama before we suffer the same fate!

    • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/23/2008 3:42:34 PM

      That's the biggest nonsense I've ever heard.

      Obama's campaign platform does not include "nationalizing white-owned businesses". Are you kidding me? Congress would impeach him if he tried. Wake up and have a little common sense, here.

      • Posted By: paulte @ 06/23/2008 10:50:28 PM

        You people are simply blind. Race is destiny. Obama and Mugabe are brothers under the skin!

        • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/25/2008 2:37:49 PM

          We humans share about 95% of our DNA with fellow same-species members of any race or color. We functionally share about 90% of our DNA with *rats*. Race is a cultural phenomenon far more than it is a scientific one.

          • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:10:52 PM

            The inference I would draw from your logic is that the 5-10% DNA dissimilarity makes a HUGE difference. It is precisely this fact that explains the differences between rats and humans. ! A 1% or 2% mutation amongst Homo sapiens can have prodigious consequences with regards to physiology and mental development.

            • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/26/2008 11:41:51 PM

              Not in terms of nationalizing white-owned businesses. It's a ludicrous and slanderous assumption. If you're trying to imply that a DNA difference can cause a person to hold a different set of racial preferences and cultural/economic norms, you're badly misinformed.

              The last significant movement that attempted to imply theories of "racial intelligence" was actually that of the Nazis - though you seem to have an aversion to WWII imagery, the parallel is valid in this case. They made similar claims about DNA and "mental development", and used them to justify policies of ethnic cleansing and discrimination.

              I know you'll hate the comparison, but you really might want to look it up. It's been conclusively disproven - DNA-based theories of "criminality" or social norms really went out last century sometime.

              • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/27/2008 10:35:06 AM

                Please read your original comment. Then review my response to your comment. I know it's difficult but please try... Do you agree or disagree: small changes in DNA structure can have lead to marked differences in physiology, aptitude, mental outlook etc? If not, does this not contradict your original thread. You've put forth your thesis. I've responded with my anti-thesis. Can we arrive at a synthesis? BTW...The mental development I'm referring to is neutral. You've posited a whole set of arguments (Nazis, White owned businesses) that are irrelevant and tangential to the original posting and my subsequent response.
                I have no aversion to WWII imagery as you term it. I do have a problem with people that throw out the Nazi/Hitler card and have no idea about what they're referring to contextually. I will respond in this forum and call them on it.

                • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/30/2008 8:42:03 AM

                  TheVigil, I am waiting on your response....putting out an APB for TheVigil......

        • Posted By: BobbyNY @ 06/24/2008 4:11:46 PM

          You have achieved exactly what you wanted to. Blogging silly things and get everyone's reaction. You are probably a lonely person, stuck in a back room typing responses when the boss is not looking!

      • Posted By: paulte @ 06/23/2008 3:53:30 PM

        It's called the slippery slope! Mugabe has been in power 20 years. Best to nip things in the bud! All's fair in politics! Hillary started it!

        • Posted By: Zig Zag @ 06/23/2008 4:34:26 PM

          I'm sorry, did you just call yourself a slippery dope? I couldn't agree more.

          • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:13:48 PM

            'Slippery Dope"?? This would be funny if it made any contextual sense .

    • Posted By: Zig Zag @ 06/23/2008 4:33:52 PM

      All right, time for you slip back under that pointly little white hood and burn a cross in your mother's yard with the rest of your bigot friends.

      • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:37:48 PM

        Congratulations! I was wondering how long it'd be before we got the obligatory KKK insult. We've already had the Nazi angle utilized in a previous post. You people are doing me proud with your non sequiturs and ad hominems. Keep up the good work!

    • Posted By: ChiBevo @ 06/23/2008 4:58:59 PM

      Please, please tell me that this is your closed minded way of attempting to be provocative and not an insight into a bigoted and hate filled, not to mention completely ignorant soul. Are you actually attempting to hold a single black leader as reference to all black leaders? Really? By that same thought logic (and I use the word logic very loosely here) we would never vote for another white leader again. Must I really run off a list of those of the lighter persuasion, which have created chaos and pain? Let???s just look at this country???s current ???illustrious??? leader shall we?

      It???s funny, here is a man claiming himself to be the guardian of true democracy, however, when those are really in need of it, of course he sits on his hands???or when it is practiced, those practicing are ostracized. I guess somehow oil reserves must further strengthen democracy, I don???t know.

    • Posted By: RiversideWarrior @ 06/23/2008 4:33:55 PM

      Idiot. Obama has nothing remotely to do with this despotic old man who is increasingly making the notion of a return to the former Rhodesian government a very attractive idea in terms of saving millions of starving and brutalized people. Bring back Ian Smith, down with Mugabe!

    • Posted By: NEB_IA @ 06/23/2008 4:26:26 PM

      I am appalled by your racist and rather ignorant statement!!! Oppression, malevolence and gluttony know no racial, ethnic or religious bounds. Many white men have murdered, raped and stolen the treasures of a nation. Some did it blatantly through conquest; some through the vial of legitimate governance; and many more through the legacy of bigotry. I???m happy to see that people like ???paulte??? are a dieing breed and our country is on the verge of growing-up!

  • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/23/2008 2:00:56 PM

    "Mugabe told supporters that 'only God' would remove him from power." That will probably be true.

    When the one-million-percent inflation has escalated into countrywide famine so deep that Mugabe cannot even feed his supporters - when warlordism breaks out among the areas that he will no longer be able to control due to being unable to offer even the most basic governmental services or protections - when the thugs he's surrounded himself with begin to scheme to seize power for themselves as the 84-year-old Mugabe gets older, weaker, and closer to his death...then God will indeed have begun the process of removing Mugabe from power. And Mugabe will find out, as we all must - as ancient god-kings in mammoth tombs surrounded by slaves in a mass suicide did, as the great medieval conquerors surrounded by the wealth and pillage of conquests of a hundred nations did, and as the modern titans of the military-industrial complex who blacken the sky so that they might more brazenly stand astride the wealth of an entire world inevitably must - that all powers fade, vanish, and are stripped, in the end. No living being can dictate terms to Death, and very possibly none ever will be able to.

    No matter how much a man tries to seize and exert power on his surroundings, there are forces that overshadow us all and guide us to the same place, after all is said, and all has been done.

    • Posted By: burnt turd @ 06/24/2008 10:34:58 AM

      Deep, Vigil, very deep. You got it. Maybe you should email this bull s*** to someone who can do something about it. While you sit at home and eat.

      • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/25/2008 2:07:24 PM

        I have no money to fly to Zimbabwe with, no guns with which I could wage war there, and it's likely that the citizenry would (quite rightly) distrust me as much as anyone else in this kind of chaos. And, you know, I'm sure if I just write a letter to Mugabe with all these flowery turns of phrase, he'll no doubt see the error of his ways, and turn his nation into a paradise...wait...no.

        I have no shame about posting what I posted, though, so I will continue on in living, and eating, as you say. What am I supposed to do, go on a hunger strike in sympathy, so I can throw my own health on Mugabe's sacrifical altar too?

        It's a news site comments board, loosen up, man.

        • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:16:17 PM

          No offense but I think you should stick with prose...the poetic excess doesn't accentuate your writing strength.

          • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/26/2008 11:24:43 PM

            Noted. However, I've seen your other comments. I have no desire to think and talk like you, so I will continue to think and talk like me, as I always have. Cheers.

            • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/27/2008 10:41:35 AM

              I don't blame you.. I have this annoying habit of staying on topic and employing a pesky rhetorical tool called logic. It's been truly sublime corresponding with you.

              • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/27/2008 5:22:41 PM

                I renounce my post above. I'm calling an end to my sarcastic offensive. You've been cordial to me. Please disregard any of my other needling posts. Seriously, it has indeed been a learning experience - at least for me. Good luck to you.

  • Posted By: burnt turd @ 06/23/2008 4:43:30 PM

    It seems like a wonderful place. I wonder why they can't get that country under control? Hmmm, I wonder why that is? Its Africa, they have diamonds and oil, but they can't seem to hold it together? Hmmm. Any guesses?

    • Posted By: ChiBevo @ 06/23/2008 5:08:44 PM

      Between you and Paulte, its not even worth a cognitive response. I am sure it would be lost anyway. I will just cut and paste:

      Please, please tell me that this is your closed minded way of attempting to be provocative and not an insight into a bigoted and hate filled, not to mention completely ignorant soul. Are you actually attempting to hold a single black leader as reference to all black leaders? Really? By that same thought logic (and I use the word logic very loosely here) we would never vote for another white leader again. Must I really run off a list of those of the lighter persuasion, which have created chaos and pain? Let???s just look at this country???s current ???illustrious??? leader shall we?

      It???s funny, here is a man claiming himself to be the guardian of true democracy, however, when those are really in need of it, of course he sits on his hands???or when it is practiced, those practicing are ostracized. I guess somehow oil reserves must further strengthen democracy, I don???t know.

      • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/24/2008 1:22:42 AM

        It's the Greater Internet F***wad Effect.

        http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/

        Also, I might add the "Greater Internet F***wad Agglomeration Effect". Racists, bigots, and generally hateful people frequently aren't that successful in life, so many of them have way too much time to sit around message boards espousing hate-speech. Just about every message board I've ever seen has been overrun with at least one absolute sociopath, who usually sounds like an entire army all by him/herself and provokes at least a few people into collateral bickering and hatred along with them.

        There have always been these cranks, it's just that before the advent of the Internet they were restricted to bigotry and hatred in their living rooms (well, unless you take it back fifty years or so, when it was just completely ingrained in society). The Internet is wonderful, but one does pay a price for free speech.

        • Posted By: burnt turd @ 06/24/2008 10:31:40 AM

          Again, a racist at heart. I posted the comment to see if what kind of reaction I could get from a true racist. You all think you can change the world by getting on your computers and "blogging" your true feelings. You think you are changing the world. Bull S*%@! You are doing nothing. You can do nothing, except make your self feel better by using big words, and talking to other idiots who think they can change things. Get a life.

          • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/25/2008 2:12:25 PM

            I don't believe you are attracting much positive attention with that kind of language, and you're certainly not bothering me. I've been baited by better and am well familiar with the kind of logical fallacies employed in demagogue tactics; you're going to have to work much harder than that to get under my skin.

            But if it makes you feel better to vent like that, go to it, and I wish you the best of luck.

            • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 5:51:43 PM

              It seems to bother you sufficiently that you keep responding to this thread over and over again.

              • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/26/2008 11:46:38 PM

                No, I simply enjoy the exchange of opinions, to the extent that such a thing passes for debate on these boards. You guys aren't affecting my equanimity at all. Free speech is free speech.

                • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/27/2008 11:57:28 AM

                  "Free speech" ,"exchange of opinions" blah ...blah ...blah. Come on my friend. Admit that this forum gets your atavistic passions flowing. I have no shame in admitting such. The thrill of knocking these softball arguments out of the park is intoxicating...is it not?

                  • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/27/2008 5:18:53 PM

                    I renounce the above post. I'm calling an end to my sarcastic offensive. You've been cordial to me. Please disregard any of my other needling posts. In all seriousness, It has indeed been a learning experience - at least for me. Good luck to you.

      • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/26/2008 9:03:31 AM

        I'm SO glad you cut and pasted! I can't get enough of the cliches and banality. Nice use of the the ? mark symbol too. Is that designed to grab my attention? Finally, the trifecta is complete: we've had a KKK, and Nazi reference already. I was beginning to fear we would not be able to include the obligatory Bush-bashing.

      • Posted By: burnt turd @ 06/24/2008 10:22:14 AM

        How am I a racist? I said nothing about the african american race. Look at yourself in your comment. And ask who is the racist. That is funny. The people who scream racist, usually are the racists. You are the ipidomy of an idiot.

  • Posted By: Sultan Ahmed @ 06/27/2008 6:37:47 AM

    Vide the file
    relating to the kenyan history,
    there is great similarity,
    between the circumstances,
    existed now in Zimbabwe.


    So the same solution would worke out the situation,
    such as negotiations and power sharing formula,
    have alrady experienced in kenya.

    Ban Ki Moon,like Kofi Annan,
    should move forward and resolve the crisis,
    created after first phase of presidential vote,

  • Posted By: Sultan Ahmed @ 06/27/2008 6:00:54 AM

    Enter Your Comment

  • Posted By: Redrider @ 06/26/2008 10:46:54 AM

    Is that a little Hitler mustache going on under that snoze?? And the fist.. Looks like Hitler but a tan version.

    • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/26/2008 11:15:13 AM

      I'm afraid that's an insult to Hitler.

  • Posted By: AmericatheBeautiful @ 06/26/2008 9:46:33 AM

    My heart goes out to all of those people in this reporter's articles. This man is awful! I just read over the latest of the comments, and I feel as though you should really focus on the reports instead of trying to politically correct each other. I do not believe the reporter is risking his life to tell this story for you just to argue about political correctness. My prayers go out to all of those affected by this dreadful man!

    • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/26/2008 11:13:32 AM

      I'd settle for some correctness - period. Forget the political aspect.

  • Posted By: shanekid @ 06/25/2008 10:40:43 AM

    Paulte,
    I am repulsed by your comment. Mugabe is not a terrible ruler because he is black, he is a terrible ruler because he is an evil man. White men have been just as bad. (Hilter, Stalin). I'm white, but men should be judged by the content of their character not the color of their skin. By the way, I'm not even an Obama supporter. I strongly disagree with some of the things he stands for, but to belittle him for the color of his skin is no different that Mugabe, who is ridding his country of white farmers as fast as he can. Its wrong.

    • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:30:55 PM

      Please read these posts carefully before spewing non sequiturs. Paulte didn't say that Mugabe is a terrible ruler because he's black. He said he represents black rule at its worst. By inference I could say that Hitler represented the worst in German leadership. Remember people - differentiate between leaders and hoi polloi. As for the BHO comment - I found it improbable and absurd but not altogether impossible.

  • Posted By: sparky716 @ 06/23/2008 3:41:47 PM

    paulte you are a racist if there ever was one...you need to seek help....bet you wished you were born in Germany in 1929....you would fit right in

    • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 6:01:10 PM

      Actually being born in 1929 Germany would not have been that great. This was the year the Great American Depression became a world wide economic catastrophe. Germany was under the rule of the weak and corrupt Weimar Republic - remember the Nazis did not come to power until Jan.1933. By the time Paulte was a young teen he would have been drafted into the Hitler Youth and used as cannon fodder on the Eastern Front....hardly an idyllic existence. Way to thrown in the obligatory Hitler/Nazi/German comparsion without having any idea of what you're referring to!...I'm proud of you.

    • Posted By: paulte @ 06/23/2008 3:56:50 PM

      Hillary played the race card. I'm just expanding it to the whole deck!

      • Posted By: BobbyNY @ 06/24/2008 4:12:19 PM

        You have achieved exactly what you wanted to. Blogging silly things and get everyone's reaction. You are probably a lonely person, stuck in a back room typing responses when the boss is not looking!

        • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 5:49:57 PM

          Like you're doing right now??

      • Posted By: sparky716 @ 06/23/2008 4:04:51 PM

        your sick seek help !!!

        • Posted By: pbpace @ 06/25/2008 5:48:12 PM

          That's you're sick -as in the contraction of the word you and are. Your sick would show possession.

      • Posted By: rbarton_aia@sbcglobal.net @ 06/23/2008 4:06:25 PM

        Dude, you're several cards short of a whole deck. Stop digging.

  • Posted By: Anju Chandel @ 06/24/2008 2:36:52 AM

    Zimbabwe is a clear case of mockery of everything civil in this world. And the world's inability - including that of the UN's - to intervene positively is really shocking, and, in fact, morale boosting for people with dictatorial instincts. Why are the so-called powerful countries of the world acting deaf and dumb? Together we cannot even reign in an aging but ambitious politician like Mugabe?

    • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/25/2008 2:41:46 PM

      Sadly, the U.N. tends to succeed or falter along with its chief powerholder these days, which would be the U.S. America has had eight years of basically completely ignoring and withdrawing from it, and unfortunately a good deal of American thinking going around these days is that the U.N. is useless, which ignores the fact that it has more or less become that way because we made it so.

      American politicians these days are too busy caving to Israeli pressure to spit hardline rhetoric at Iran than they are ready to take on the more egregious cases of dictatorship around the world. The U.S. still has an embassy active in Burma, too, just as an FYI.

  • Posted By: bloggerrich @ 06/23/2008 4:27:30 PM

    Just out of curiocity...is there even 1 country in Africa that has a decent economy and doesn't kill it's people or let them starve? Please post 1 or more if known so I can do a little research.

    • Posted By: TheVigil @ 06/25/2008 2:32:33 PM

      Quite a few.

      Northern Africa along the coast tends to be somewhat developed in contrast to the rest of the continent. Egypt is one of the preeminent cultural powers, a true nation and rather full of culture. Further west, Morocco and Algeria, while by no means free from problems, also have had a certain amount of stability as well as developing culture of their own (I love rai music particularly). Nigeria in the West has a relatively powerful economy, though there are some pretty serious problems with violence between groups there. In the South, South Africa is also known for relative stability and the best-developed economy in Africa, though the Zimbabwe crisis has provoked horrible anti-refugee riots there at present.

      But I've met people from even war-ravaged countries, exchange students mostly, who were educated, peaceful, and scholarly. It's a mistake to think that the "whole continent" is filled with nothing but murder and exploitation because there's strife in much of it. Remember, developed countries sometimes exploit their people and allow them to live in horrendous conditions too, though not to the same extent as in Africa.

    • Posted By: Zig Zag @ 06/23/2008 4:30:36 PM

      I think South Africa is probably in the best shape.

      • Posted By: Mzalendo @ 06/23/2008 6:10:29 PM

        Botswana is a good example.

  • Posted By: Sultan Ahmed @ 06/25/2008 10:33:55 AM

    History is witness,
    History has its pages,
    large number of such incidents,
    as happening in Zimbabwe,
    under the leadership of mugabe,
    but at the same time,
    history tells us that
    it gave no parden to such dictators,
    they were hanged,
    or disappeared during the search of shelter,
    but found nothing,
    niether safty nor shelter.

  • Posted By: Professor Barking-mad @ 06/25/2008 8:20:12 AM

    Invite Mug and his cronies to a 'top-level summit' at a place of his choosing (should work - his ridiculous vanity says so - preferably somewhere out in the desert though) - warn the locals to take shelter - and
    NUKE THE BASTARDS!.....

  • Posted By: Professor Barking-mad @ 06/25/2008 8:16:38 AM

    Invite Mug 7 his cronies to a 'top-level summit' at a place of his choosing (in order to pander to his ridicuolus vanity - but preferably somewhere in the desert) - warn the natives to take shelter and NUKE THE BASTARDS!.......

  • Posted By: gilka @ 06/24/2008 4:06:12 PM

    For those that are asking for the west to come to the rescue, why don't we let Africans handle their problems as at this time I feel they should.

  • Posted By: archmsu @ 06/24/2008 2:59:24 PM

    Where is the UN? Oops, i forgot, they're lame ducks.

  • Posted By: PacificGatePost @ 06/24/2008 12:29:58 AM

    TIME FOR A SHIFT IN ATTITUDE AND APPROACH TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

    http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2008/06/resuscitation-of-sub-saharan-africa.html

    The history of aid has been dismal, and resourse exploitation has cursed the population.

  • Posted By: eddiewhere @ 06/24/2008 12:08:21 AM

    We need to get out of Iraq and transfer responsibility and management of that country to the IRAQ's themselves. THEY SHOULD be backed by a multinational force led by Middle Eastern countries until they are able to fight extremist on their own.
    Our unilateral approach in the MIDDLE EAST has to come to an end. ECONOMICALLY, IRAQ IS KILLING the average tax payer and making a few private contractors and oil firms rich.

    We need Oil. WE NEED OIL. Therefore, getting rid of the Iranian regime is at the top of our agenda.
    The majority in Iran want change but not under and American led invasion. It has to be done from within. We lost the support of moderate Arabs and Muslims over the last six years. Hopefully, PRESIDENT OBAMA can empower this group and encourage them to meet with their counterparts.

    Inotherwords there should be an alliance between all moderates in the Middle East, JEWS, ARABs, MUSLIMS, ect... These forces must be self motivated by a common cause, Peace. IF this group can be strengthened they themselves will defeat or at least contain the force of extremism.
    WE must strengthen the forces behind peace and weaken those against peace on both sides.

    THE UNITED STATES CANNOT SOLVE THE CONFLICT IN THE MIDDLE EAST. WE CAN ONLY STRENGHTEN AND SUPPORT THE PEOPLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST TO SOLVE THEIR OWN PROBLEMS.

    IN THE SHORT RUN WE NEED MIDDLE EASTERN OIL. THIS COMPLICATES OUR ROLE OVER THERE.
    WE Should have had an ENERGY SUMMIT TEN YEARS AGO. WE NEED TO COME UP WITH A TWENTY YEAR PLAN to RID OURSELVES of OIL DEPENDENCY IN THE MIDDLE EAST. TWENTY YEARS WILL GO BY LIKE NOTHING. WE HAVE TO START NOW.

    THE most dangerous threats are the ones you do not see coming. LIKE CHINA, RUSSIA, EASTERN EUROPEAN organized crime. Monitoring these entities will be our great challenge.
    ARE WE READY FOR CYBER WAR. I DON't THINK SO.

    AFRICA HAS NO MIDDLE CLASS, only poor and rich. AFRICANS ARE JUST NOT READY TO GOVERN THEMSELVES. THIS IS REALITY.

  • Posted By: mfenwick @ 06/23/2008 10:21:22 PM

    Look at their race and culture; not much above animals.

  • Posted By: Mzalendo @ 06/23/2008 6:17:51 PM

    A revolution in Zim is long overdue. Mugabe will obviously not relinquish power by peaceful means. He has done everything in his power to destroy Zim and its people, they owe him a big 'heave ho'!

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