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Drooling on the Pillow

Friday, June 10, 2005

Zimbabwe 

While pee-flecked korans hold the media's interest like a pork chop held in front of Michael Moore a slo-mo genocide is unfolding in Zimbabwe that is going to blow up into an international crisis within the next few months. The death-spiral Mugabe has led his nation into is entering it's terminal phase.

It's a commonplace that famines are generally one quarter crop failure and three quarters political failure. This is something different. You can't really call it a failure of government, because the government is getting exactly what it wants.

Like the Ukraine in the '30s, China in the '50s and '60s, Ethiopia in the '80s and Somalia in the '90s this famine has been engineered to achieve a specific political goal. And, news reports to the contrary, this is not a black-white issue. Mr. Mugabe has nothing to fear from the white farmers he has terrorized and evicted. They have no international support, no power and they're not the ones doing the starving. It's the opposition parties that are facing the pointy end of this stick

Joe Katzman at Winds of Change discusses the situation in Zimbabwe and Darfur, the numbingly familiar reasons for this catastrophe and the reasons no one (U.N., EU, U.S., African states) has done anything about it. The term 'slo-mo genocide', by the way, is his.

He links to several interesting pages, one of which demonstrates that over the past century four times as many people died at the hands of their government than in combat. They use the term Democide.

Another interesting essay he links to is Zimbabwe and the Kitty Genovese Incident at The Adventures of Chester.

Reflecting on the situation in Africa has led Katzman to a position that he never would have imagined he would hold: that the right to bear arms is a universal right.

And he's Canadian.
Posted by: Sluggo / 12:15 PM
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