The thing that amazes me the most is why Mbeki supports all this maybe somebody on the ground in zim can explain even more shocking is the deafening silence from Mandela especialy withe the levels of violence in Zim at the mo Desmond Tutu is the ony one who has come out openly and condemed Mugabe.

Because the ANC is following in the footsteps of ZANU-PF.

They have credibility issues with the voters, and they blame all their failures on the "apartheid regime" (in Zim, on the colonialists). They too are taking/planning to take the farms to win favor with the voters. There is a new bill just tables in RSA that gives the minister the power to do this. And when that fails, the ANC will resort to voter intimidation just as ZANU is now doing.

The ANC and ZANU-PF are two manifestations of the same theology. The ANC considers Mugabe and co to be comrades in the same struggle.

To his credit, Mbeki has taken on the anti-immigrant violence in RSA but this is being supported by other political elements, my guess from within the ANC. Just as we have some Republicans who want the illegals out and some who want more to come in. However, Mbeki is a lame duck.

Mandela is a terrorist who was reincarnated as a saint by the media. Don't expect too much from him. He is pretty ancient these days.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080605/ap_on_re_af/zimbabw...TRl2eoEWvt6.njME1vAI

US, British diplomats are attacked in Zimbabwe

HARARE, Zimbabwe - The U.S. Embassy says its diplomats and British colleagues were attacked as they tried to investigate political violence in Zimbabwe.
ADVERTISEMENT

Paul Engelstad, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy, says a U.S. Embassy staffer was beaten and tires of cars in the convoy were slashed.

Engelstad says the group was still being detained at a roadblock in rural Zimbabwe.

He says U.S. Ambassador James McGee, who did not go on the trip, was pressing Zimbabwean officials to release them.

Well, that should get a response.

can't help but wonder if that is about all the U.S. will need to put a travel boycott on

quote:

Originally posted by butchloc:
can't help but wonder if that is about all the U.S. will need to put a travel boycott on

A travel ban for US citizens is coming, I'd bet the farm on it. IMHO, anyone hunting Zimbabwe in the near future is playing with fire. Not worth the risk, which has just been increased 10 fold.

I wonder if anyone else sees more than a tad of irony here?

Families get kicked out of their homes and have their homes and lands seized and ruined and their livlihoods taken away, human rights abuses galore, including murder and genocide, an entire population forced into starvation, elections stolen and the entire economy totally destroyed and the entire political world all look away and do or say virtually nothing for years....... Then as soon as a few diplomats get mildly slapped about, the politicians all throw up their hands in horror and scream something must be done!



Ah well, that's life I suppose!

Glad I don't have a trip to Zim in the pipeline right now. Surely we're not just going to "turn the other cheek" after this:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,363523,00.html

I can't but help to wonder if the US was not "waiting" for something like this to occur.

I guess we'll see what - if anything - happens next...

Just one Brigade of the 82nd would do the trick. Then we just turn it back to the Rhodesians...jorge

I am scheduled to go in September. I hope this all blows over by then.

"The U.S. government said it would take the incident to the U.N. Security Council."

That'll Show 'em!

We go there as hunters not politicians.

quote:

Originally posted by new_guy:
"The U.S. government said it would take the incident to the U.N. Security Council."

That'll Show 'em!

Chris,
Yea, the UN got some real muscle, lookout Robert. We know that will take some time, maybe long enough for me to go over and get back and probably every hunter going through Sept, Oct, etc.

Dirk

While in Namibia last week, I was told by an unofficial source that Mbeki is married to Mugabe's sister. If this is true, it would explain much.

Anyone out there who can add to this or confirm?

Geoff

Geoff:

I think that is an urban, or in this case African, myth. There has been rumor and innuendo to the effect but nothing definitive, IIRC.

The US is totally helpless in this. If they so much as raise a finger towards Mugabe (the saint who rose up and put those hateful whites in their place) the fall out would be politically suicidal for any politician involved. Now one in the west will do anything and Mugabe knows that.

It is sick and sad but This is going to have to play it's self out the African way. I fully expect South Africa to only be a few years away from the same situation.

IF YOU WANT TO HUNT IN AFRICA NOW IS THE TIME.

What a pity Zimbabwe doesn´t have any oil..



L

If it did, Mugabe would have been swinging by now and we would not go there as civil war would have broken out....truthfully, who knows what would happen. Currently nothing but saber rattling from the US state dpt.

quote:

Originally posted by Lorenzo:
What a pity Zimbabwe doesn´t have any oil..



L

quote:

Originally posted by robncolorado:
If it did, Mugabe would have been swinging by now and we would not go there as civil war would have broken out....truthfully, who knows what would happen. Currently nothing but saber rattling from the US state dpt.

quote:

Originally posted by Lorenzo:
What a pity Zimbabwe doesn´t have any oil..



L

You know what you have, and you don`t know what you get. Hopefully mr Mugabe got to leav the post as president of Zim and let the democraty rule, It`s a tikking bomb the hole situation, South Africa is about going the same way, I hope not, but I`m afraid of the situation in the country these days

Mugabe is throwing out all the helping organizations that is working in Zimbabwe, Headlines in newspaper in Norway this morning:

http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/06/06/537362.html
It`s in Norwegian

The Kenyan Primeminister Mr. Raila Odinga calling Mugabe a dictator, this is the hardestb attack a African leader ever said about Mugabe.

quote:

Originally posted by Russ Gould:
Because the ANC is following in the footsteps of ZANU-PF.

They have credibility issues with the voters, and they blame all their failures on the "apartheid regime" (in Zim, on the colonialists). They too are taking/planning to take the farms to win favor with the voters. There is a new bill just tables in RSA that gives the minister the power to do this. And when that fails, the ANC will resort to voter intimidation just as ZANU is now doing.

The ANC and ZANU-PF are two manifestations of the same theology. The ANC considers Mugabe and co to be comrades in the same struggle.

To his credit, Mbeki has taken on the anti-immigrant violence in RSA but this is being supported by other political elements, my guess from within the ANC. Just as we have some Republicans who want the illegals out and some who want more to come in. However, Mbeki is a lame duck.

Mandela is a terrorist who was reincarnated as a saint by the media. Don't expect too much from him. He is pretty ancient these days.

I have seen so many misconceptions posted about the ANC and ZANU-PF's buddy-buddy relationship that this 100% accurate view is just a pleasure to read Thanks Russ for posting this. I endorse almost every statement; Mbeki's stance on the anti-jobpoaching violance is just to draw the attention away from the inadequacies of ANC government to control the unckecked influx of people who rob South Africans of jobs.

As Russ said, South Africa is on it's way to the same or a similar situation! Hell, we live in s%&^$t times!

In good hunting.

Andrew McLaren

Firstly i dot think the west openely do anything to Mugabe and he knows how far he can push his luck just last week Mbeki is reported to have told George Bush that but out of Zimbabwe.South Africa will be far worse of than Zimbabwe because Zimbabweans are passive people whereas the South Africans are very violent.

The shocking thing is how much my South African friends are in denial, they say south africa is diferent and it is a democaracy and the west has too much of a stake in South Africa.

15 years ago in Zimbabwe people used to laugh at Zambia and Mozambique and say the same.The best thing the South Africans can do is to be prepared and have a plan B and dont caught out like the Zimbos

As for the west attacking Zimbabwe i dont think it would happen and if it did happen Mugabe has told his Army to slaughter all the non blacks and i dont think that the Zimbabwean Army is a push over like most people think.

The news gets worse.

http://africa.reuters.com/wire/news/usnL06504486.html

quote:

Zimbabwean police blocked opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai from reaching a rally on Friday in his campaign ahead of a presidential run-off vote later this month, a Reuters photographer said.

BBC World News are now reporting that the Government have now forbidden the aid agencies to operate in the country. Then they played a recording of Bright Matonga who said only those areas that voted Zanu PF were gonna get fed.

quote:

Originally posted by shakari:
BBC World News are now reporting that the Government have now forbidden the aid agencies to operate in the country. Then they played a recording of Bright Matonga who said only those areas that voted Zanu PF were gonna get fed.

More details here:

Police stop Zimbabwe opposition leader's campaign

HARARE, Zimbabwe - The opposition said Friday that its rallies had been banned indefinitely three weeks before the presidential runoff, while the U.S. ambassador accused President Robert Mugabe's regime of using food as a weapon to stay in power.

U.S. Ambassador James McGee said the regime is distributing food mostly to its supporters and that those backing the opposition are offered food only if they hand in identification that would allow them to vote.

If the situation continues, "massive, massive starvation" will result, McGee told reporters in Washington by video conference from Harare.

Aid groups in Zimbabwe were ordered Thursday to halt their operations, leaving impoverished Zimbabweans dependent on the government and Mugabe's party.

Just reading press reports this morning, it appears things are spiralling out of control at an alarming rate. What economy there was, has completely collapsed, lowest agricultural harvest ever recorded, foreign aid denied to the starving masses, oppositon party members arrested, etc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindi...y-food-handouts.html

http://africa.reuters.com/business/news/usnBAN739913.html

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jN2OHOS8V4PSmYOJEWIMWTfeZItQD914O36G1

This thing is going to come to a head sooner, rather than later! Don't think I'd want to be there when it does.

Obviously Mugabe and Zanupf are scared sh#$&%**. They are desperate.

465H&H

And then, to top it all off, you've got assholes like this writing this kind of crap:

http://www.alternet.org/story/86984/

My God, what are people like the author of that article smoking? The black Zimbos went to SA because the white Zimbos have a stranglehold on the land? What utter crap. The black Zimbos went to SA to escape political persecution by Mugabe and his thugs, and to get work because Mugabe and his buddies destroyed the economy of Zimbabwe. Many of the black Zimbos that were forced to go to RSA went there because they were THROWN OFF the white-owned farms (usually 100 to 200 workers and family per farm) when Mugabe threw the white farmers off the land?

Let me ask a rhetorical question: when you eat a slice of bread made from wheat grown by a farmer, does it matter what color the farmer's skin was? And does it matter how he came to own the piece of paper that says that farm belongs to him? Or is it just important that he is a good farmer?

This is the problem with democracy, I'm afraid, assholes like the author of this article are actually allowed to vote. And to write and publish garbage like this.

The food weapon, (read mass starvation), is common in sub-Saharan Africa. Look at the north-south Sudanese war as a prime example. Why spend scant foreign exchange on ammo when you can simply starve the enemy to death instead?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindi...y-for-'treason'.html

I believe that Bob with his chinese and cuban trained terrorists have beaten the people of Zim into complete submission. On the other hand if anybody shows any attempt to fight back then the blood will flow. If you are going over please be carefull.

http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/12391

More saber rattling:


Zimbabwe's Mugabe says war vets ready to fight



By MacDonald Dzirutwe 20 minutes ago

HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe said on Friday liberation war veterans would take up arms if he loses a June 27 presidential run-off vote.

Mugabe told youth members of his ruling ZANU-PF party in Harare that the veterans had told him they would launch a new bush war if opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai wins the election.

"They said if this country goes back into white hands just because we have used a pen (voted), 'we will return to the bush to fight,"' Mugabe said, in the latest ratcheting-up of pressure to extend his 28-year presidency.

Mugabe says Tsvangirai is a puppet of former colonial ruler Britain.

The war veterans, usually acting alongside the youth militia, have regularly been used as shock troops to intimidate government opponents.

Movement for Democratic Change leader Tsvangirai, human rights groups and Western powers accuse Mugabe of unleashing a brutal campaign to win the run-off.

Tsvangirai says 66 of his followers have been murdered but former guerrilla leader Mugabe, who has ruled since independence in 1980, blames the MDC for violence that has caused widespread international concern.

Earlier, the MDC said Zimbabwean police impounded two campaign buses used by Tsvangirai in the latest action against the opposition leader in the election campaign.

Tsvangirai, who has been detained four times in the past week and has had his own vehicle confiscated, would continue the campaign, MDC spokesman George Sibotshiwe said.

Mugabe and ZANU-PF were defeated in March for the first time since independence in 1980 but Tsvangirai failed to win the presidential vote outright, necessitating a second round.

The Southern African Development Community, a grouping of 14 nations including Zimbabwe, has sent a team of election monitors to Harare. Observers from Western nations critical of Mugabe's government are not being allowed into the country.

(Additional reporting by Cris Chinaka; Writing by Marius Bosch; Editing by Barry Moody)

From the Times Online- Mutilation and Burning
of Oppostion

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men left.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed her and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a gas bomb through the window.

The killing last Friday — one of the most grotesque atrocities committed by Robert Mugabe’s regime since independence in 1980 — was carried out on a wave of worsening brutality before the run-off presidential elections in two weeks. It echoed the activities of Foday Sankoh, the rebel leader in the Sierra Leone civil war that ended in 2002, whose trademark was to chop off hands and feet.

Dadirai Chipiro, 45, a former pre-school teacher, was the second wife of a junior official of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) burnt alive last Friday by Zanu (PF) militiamen. Pamela Pasvani, the 21-year-old pregnant wife of a local councillor in Harare, did not suffer mutilation but died later of her burns; her six-year-old son perished in the flames.

About 70 local MDC supporters gathered in Patson Chipiro’s small yard in Mhondoro on Wednesday, 90 miles south of Harare, to protect him. Inside the hut where his wife of 29 years died, women sang softly to a subdued drum beat next to the cheap wooden coffin. The thatched roof had been destroyed in the fire so they sat under the open sky. The lid of the coffin could not be closed because Dadirai Chipiro’s outstretched arm had been burnt rigid. Her charred hand was found as women swept the hut.
Related

Patson Chipiro, 51, a small, determined man, arrived from Harare on Friday afternoon to find his three brick huts ablaze. “I was trying to put the fire out,†he said. “I thought my wife was hiding in the bushes.â€

His four-year-old nephew, Admire, heard him calling her. “He ran to me. He said, ‘Auntie has been beaten and they threw her in the fire.’â€

Wonder why the "New Africa" apologists haven't jumped in to defend this "civilized" incident...jorge

jorge;
Right on. Wonder where the peanut farmer is with his band of merry do gooders.
Mugabe knows that all the countries will just huff and puff, wring their hands and do absolutely nothing. Observors are now just begining to arrive. Far to late to make any difference. Wonder what the reaction to Zim would be if Mugabe were white. What a shame.

Some of the headlines in Norwegian Broadcast news was that Mugabe speaks too the people and say that he is ready to go to war for the country and the people. Who is he going to fight, yes, his own people! I guess this is some of his treaths to the people so they should vote for him. Hopefully the other state in southern Africa will do some pressure on Mugabe, just for a democratic election, and for the people of Zimbabwe, it`S the best for the hole region.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/ope...bes_reign_of_terror/

Here is an article that speaks the truth, BE SURE TO READ THE LAST 2 PARAGRAPHS as they are the most important. (ASSUMING I MANAGED TO POST CORRECTLY)

While I am not an Obama supporter, it strikes me he may be the one western politician os note who can speak out. Of course if he did he would lose his lefty supporters.

If you can't get the link, here are those paragraphs.

"Mugabe's savage onslaught is likely to achieve its goal. Faced with starvation, dispossession, and threats of revenge, how many Zimbabweans will muster the courage to stand against him?

But why do the rest of us do nothing? Why is the free world so indifferent to the enormities committed by Mugabe and his bullies? Where are the demonstrations outside Zimbabwe's embassies? Where are the international boycotts, the UN resolutions, the presidential and papal condemnations? Where is the International Criminal Court indictment of Mugabe for his long career of murder, torture, and other crimes against humanity?

Let us be honest: If the people of Zimbabwe were being terrorized by a white despot - if it were a white ruling party whose goons were beating them and burning their homes - the whole world would be aroused on their behalf. Surely they deserve no less just because their oppressor is black."

If it weren't for Jeff Jacoby's columns, I would ignore The Globe's editorial page.

I don't always agree with him, but more often than not, he is right when it comes to foreign policy, at least to my way of thinking.

The murders Jacoby reports in this column are sickening to contemplate.

Last week the Trustees of the University of Massachusetts rescinded the honorary degree they gave to Mugabe in 1986.

This was a symbolic, but I thought an appropriate and welcome action. Where is the rest of the world, especially the UN? They could take, or threaten to take, effective action.

But of course they won't.

As for intervention by the UN, unless the U.S military is spearheading the effort, the cold hard facts are there will be no enforcement of any sort by the UN. Mind you now, in the event of such U.S. action it would have to be under the command of some "Blue Beret type" and that is not going to happen either.
References have been made that if a white leader were to commit some of the atrocities we are reading about the reaction would be different?? Not sure about that, Zimbabwe is just not that high upon the order of things to unleash the "hounds of war..." We have a few problems more pressing in other parts of the world. Africa has never been a top priority for the U.S. and only in the last few years has the attention been increased any at all and that has been primarily through medical/relief efforts. Believe they will have to sort out these issues on their own and frankly the odds of that happening are very remote. When is the last time African nations have actually sorted out issues independent of others??