Now Zimbabwe is running out of paper to print money on!

http://www.latimes.com/news/na...

They should have already done this when Mugabe's thugs forced white farmers off their property. Ah well, better late then never!
...............................................

TESCO CUTS TRADE WITH ZIMBABWE
Monday June 30,2008

Tesco is to stop sourcing products from Zimbabwe as the political crisis there escalates.

Tesco said it had taken the "difficult decision" to cut trade "until there is an end to the current political crisis".

The retailer said it could not ignore the escalating crisis and the growing consensus among the international community that further action was needed to increase pressure for change.

It said in a statement: "The amount of produce Tesco sources from Zimbabwe - worth around £1 million per year - is insignificant in terms of global trade and influence.

"However, in the current circumstances, we have decided to stop sourcing any products from Zimbabwe as long as the political crisis persists in that country.

"We also attach a very high priority to ensuring that this decision does least harm to the workers and their dependants who have supplied us from Zimbabwe.

"We cannot continue to support them through trade, but are urgently finding ways to support them by other means."

The announcement is an about-turn for Tesco, who said just last week that it would be "irresponsible" to cut support to small farmers under the current conditions.

Former Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain, who has called on supermarkets to end their trade with Zimbabwe, said: "This is a very welcome decision by Tesco. I hope it will give a lead to other British and global companies to freeze or suspend ties with Zimbabwe under Mugabe's tyranny."

http://www.express.co.uk/posts...

Is the glorification of his past "such a hero" he was when butchering people in Matabeleland with his North Korea trained 5th brigade. He's always been a thug and a bully, but for years was the pinup of the left, particularly that vile simpering little petty fascist Chris Laidlaw - who was once High Commissioner to Zimbabwe in the 1980s before being Wellington Central MP for one year (which is what you get when you win a by-election and lose the general election the following year).

Ian Smith's Rhodesia was a racist authoritarian state, so awful that even apartheid ridden South Africa unhooked itself from backing him, but sadly the negotiated halfway house solution was opposed by Mugabe, whose Beijing grown Marxist-Leninist credentials demanded total revolution.

Hopefully some will see how so many African politicians fawn at Mugabe, and realise that Africa's problems are largely not the fault of developed countries, but the fault of their own incompetent, kleptocratic murderous regimes.

From Times Online
June 30, 2008

Robert Mugabe sails through summit unchallenged

"A defiant Robert Mugabe sailed unchallenged through the first test of his presidency by his peers.

Freshly sworn-in following a single-candidate election, he received a leader’s welcome when he strode into the African Union summit in Sharm el-Sheikh today and emerged unfazed, his authority intact.

He dined at a lavish luncheon given by his Egyptian hosts, hugged heads of state and other diplomats in the corridors and stayed at one of the most luxurious resorts in this Red Sea town."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t...

I admit that reason is a small and feeble flame, a flickering torch by stumblers carried in the starless night, -- blown and flared by passion's storm, -- and yet, it is the only light. Extinguish that, and nought remains.- - Robert Green Ingersoll

"I know what a shock it must be to Leftists of all parties, with their uncritical adoration of African leaders from the saintly, such as Nelson Mandela, to the repulsive, such as Mugabe, to see that sometimes black people can be evil too. But that is the truth. And Zimbabwe may be the prologue to what may happen in South Africa after a decade of failure by Thabo Mbeki is followed by the rule of the dubious Jacob Zuma. It may be very uncomfortable and embarrassing for whites to intervene to stop the butchery of black tyrants. But if they don't, hecatombs of lives will be lost."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opi...

Mugabe is backed by the Zimbabwe Army as well as being the head of a powerful political party.

Mugabe is now in his 80's and will probably be replaced by his thugs after he's dead.

You can't defeat tribalism by killing off just one dictator!

Rampant tribalism is thriving in South Africa too!

"While voting booths remained eerily quiet for most of the day, the state-run Herald newspaper claimed that "this would be the biggest turnout Zimbabwe had ever had, which is a slap in the face for detractors."

Across the country there were reports of intimidation and blatant electoral fraud - even though Mr Mugabe was the only candidate left in the race after the opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai pulled out to protect his supporters.

Western countries are now trying to push the United Nations to take more action against Zimbabwe. A statement condemning the election as "illegitimate" has been blocked by South Africa which prefers to use the anodyne word "regret".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

One bullet between the eyes at that Rome summit, and I'm sure the long-suffering Zimbabweans would have it sorted by now.

And that has to be the worst method of teaching reading skills I've ever heard of!

Well it was your idea, dear!

...every other forthright, powerful country in the world with an elite military force capable and willing to topple atrocious regimes in a matter of hours. That leaves....um...the British? Israel? Colonel Blair does have a charming smile. I think right now America is considered the hammer. And our succubi politicans would no doubt stampede us into a poorly thought-out policy in Africa to garner favor with a suddenly brawny international community-the UN-that has to say the least been unkind to us and our 'warmongering' ways..Shiiiit...you call in the big dog to put down the bear, not fluffy butlers with tea cozies spilling from their pockets.

And that has to be the worst method of teaching reading skills I've ever heard of!

Sandi... how many letters do you have in your car number plate? I may have a very cool gift for you. Let me know if it has five instead of six.

... Jeremy Johnson. I didn't say America had to do it. Clearly I need to take your recent request here seriously in order to ... um ... impregnate you with better reading skills.

The over-glorified has spoken!

A ‘failure of leadership.’ - how very brutal of Mandela, and on his birthday as well.

"Who is John Galt?"

I'm all for assassinating dictators. Fuck 'em, right? They initiate force and have no right to live, so kill them. But you do it. MI6, Mossad, GSG9, GIGN--whoever. Leave America out of it. Clean up your own fucking mess. Or their mess...however you wish to view it. I won't beat my chest for any plan that involves large numbers of American soldiers going into Africa for a humanitarian cause again, to change regimes or feed people or assassinate assholes or whatever. We tried, and received not much more than ambivalence for our efforts. Somalia is an object lesson for the US military. "Don't expect the world to care if you die and the mission is feeding people. Expect to be set up for failure and humiliation." There is still quite a bit of simmering rage within the US military over Mogadishu. Hundreds of young, seasoned soldiers were left to claw their way out of
that cesspool, with virtually no support. Dozens were wounded
and killed. Semi-nude corpses of American soldiers were dragged through
the streets, in front of the world. What was the overwhelming hard-line
response of the Clinton government and the United Nations? Pull the
fuck out, quick!

America didn't cede most of Africa to socialist pig-fuckers. Europe did, and Europe can go fix it if you're so pumped up. I shouldn't feel a moral imperative to send Africans my paycheck, but I should feel a moral imperative to send my army over there? You go do it.

...are referring to Goode.

Probably the securing of oil supplies, nothing immoral about that.

Getting rid of Saddam was definitely one of their ends, even though (as I said) Bush and Blair lied about that to the UN. They said at the time, that if Saddam gave up his WMD, then he could avert the war and stay in power.

Here's a relevant article today from the Times about those moral ends. However, according to current polls, with Obama coming into office soon, the good progress will be soon undone.

From The Times
June 27, 2008

Cheer up. We're winning this War on Terror
Al-Qaeda and the Taleban are in retreat, the surge has worked in Iraq and Islamism is discredited. Not a bad haul

Gerard Baker

"My centre is giving way. My right is in retreat. Situation excellent. I shall attack!”

If only our political leaders and opinion-formers displayed even a hint of the defiant resilience that carried Marshal Foch to victory at the Battle of the Marne. But these days timorous defeatism is on the march. In Britain setbacks in the Afghan war are greeted as harbingers of inevitable defeat. In America, large swaths of the political class continues to insist Iraq is a lost cause. The consensus in much of the West is that the War on Terror is unwinnable.

And yet the evidence is now overwhelming that on all fronts, despite inevitable losses from time to time, it is we who are advancing and the enemy who is in retreat. The current mood on both sides of the Atlantic, in fact, represents a kind of curious inversion of the great French soldier's dictum: “Success against the Taleban. Enemy giving way in Iraq. Al-Qaeda on the run. Situation dire. Let's retreat!”

Since it is remarkable how pervasive this pessimism is, it's worth recapping what has been achieved in the past few years.

Afghanistan has been a signal success. There has been much focus on the latest counter-offensive by the Taleban in the southeast of the country and it would be churlish to minimise the ferocity with which the terrorists are fighting, but it would be much more foolish to understate the scale of the continuing Nato achievement. Establishing a stable government for the whole nation is painstaking work, years in the making. It might never be completed. But that was not the principal objective of the war there.

Until the US-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan was the cockpit of ascendant Islamist terrorism. Consider the bigger picture. Between 1998 and 2005 there were five big terrorist attacks against Western targets - the bombings of the US embassies in Africa in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, 9/11, and the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005. All owed their success either exclusively or largely to Afghanistan's status as a training and planning base for al-Qaeda.

In the past three years there has been no attack on anything like that scale. Al-Qaeda has been driven into a state of permanent flight. Its ability to train jihadists has been severely compromised; its financial networks have been ripped apart. Thousands of its activists and enablers have been killed. It's true that Osama bin Laden's forces have been regrouping in the border areas of Pakistan but their ability to orchestrate mass terrorism there is severely attenuated. And there are encouraging signs that Pakistanis are starting to take to the offensive against them.

Next time you hear someone say that the war in Afghanistan is an exercise in futility ask them this: do they seriously think that if the US and its allies had not ousted the Taleban and sustained an offensive against them for six years that there would have been no more terrorist attacks in the West? What characterised Islamist terrorism before the Afghan war was increasing sophistication, boldness and terrifying efficiency. What has characterised the terrorist attacks in the past few years has been their crudeness, insignificance and a faintly comical ineptitude (remember Glasgow airport?)

The second great advance in the War on Terror has been in Iraq. There's no need to recapitulate the disasters of the US-led war from the fall of Saddam Hussein in April 2003 to his execution at the end of 2006. We may never fully make up for three and a half lost years of hubris and incompetence but in the last 18 months the change has been startling.

The “surge”, despite all the doubts and derision at the time, has been a triumph of US military planning and execution. Political progress was slower in coming but is now evident too. The Iraqi leadership has shown great courage and dispatch in extirpating extremists and a growing willingness even to turn on Shia militias. Basra is more peaceful and safer than it has been since before the British moved in. Despite setbacks such as yesterday's bombings, the streets of Iraq's cities are calmer and safer than they have been in years. Seventy companies have bid for oil contracts from the Iraqi Government. There are signs of a real political reconciliation that may reach fruition in the election later this year.

The third and perhaps most significant advance of all in the War on Terror is the discrediting of the Islamist creed and its appeal.

This was first of all evident in Iraq, where the head-hacking frenzy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his associates so alienated the majority of Muslims that it gave rise to the so-called Sunni Awakening that enabled the surge to be so effective.

But it has spread way beyond Iraq. As Lawrence Wright described in an important piece in The New Yorker last month, there is growing disgust not just among moderate Muslims but even among other jihadists at the extremism of the terrorists.

Deeply encouraging has been the widespread revulsion in Muslim communities in Europe - especially in Britain after the 7/7 attacks of three years ago. Some of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs in the past few years have been achieved from former al-Qaeda supporters who have turned against the movement.

There ought to be no surprise here. It's only their apologists in the Western media who really failed to see the intrinsic evil of Islamists. Those who have had to live with it have never been in much doubt about what it represents. Ask the people of Iran. Or those who fled the horrors of Afghanistan under the Taleban.

This is why we fight. Primarily, of course, to protect ourselves from the immediate threat of terrorist carnage, but also because we know that extending the embrace of a civilisation that liberates everyone makes us all safer.

Every death is an unspeakable tragedy. It's right that each time a soldier is killed in action we ask why. Was it really worth it?

The right response to the loss of brave souls such as Corporal Sarah Bryant, the first British woman to die in Afghanistan, is not an immediate call for retreat. It is, first of all, pride; a great, deep conviction that it is on such sacrifice that our own freedoms have always rested. Then, defiance. How foolish is the enemy that it might think our grief is really some prelude to their victory? Finally, confidence. We are prevailing in this struggle. We know it. And everywhere: in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and among Muslims around the world, the enemy knows it too.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t...

US still a world policeman? After Obama wins, definitely not!
............................................

From Times Online
June 27, 2008

North Korea destroys nuclear tower

North Korea toppled the cooling tower at its Yongbyon nuclear plant today, in a dramatic display which the secretive regime hoped would show its commitment to a nuclear deal.

However, experts say the televised event still leaves unanswered questions about the North's nuclear programme and capabilities.

The United States, keen to head off suggestions of a U-turn after it removed North Korea from its list of terrorist states yesterday, warned the secretive Communist state that it faced “consequences” if it did not fully disclose its operations. Yesterday, the regime handed over a limited list of its atomic capabilities, which critics said lacked sufficient detail.

Yesterday, President Bush moved to expunge North Korea from Washington’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, and issued a proclamation lifting some sanctions under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which it has applied to North Korea since the 1950-1953 Korean War.

The destruction of the tower today, designed to produce arms-grade plutonium, was witnessed by five foreign TV stations who later broadcast footage of the event.

It was originally scheduled to be broadcast live by international media, with CNN at the top of the guest list, but TV stations reported technical problems at the scene.

The complex, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, is at the heart of US-led six nation talks aimed at shutting North Korea’s nuclear programme in exchange for energy aid and major diplomatic and security benefits.

Yongbyon produced the plutonium for an atomic weapons programme which culminated in a nuclear test in October 2006. It was shut down in July 2007 as part of an agreement procured at the six-way talks.

Analysts have questioned the significance of the tower's destruction, as the plant has already produced enough plutonium for a small nuclear arsenal, details of which are not thought to be included the inventory submitted yesterday.

Meanwhile North Korea's success in moving towards better relations with the United States - despite having over the years ceded less ground on its nuclear programme than Iran and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the two other countries named on Mr Bush's axis of evil - could be seen as sending a message to rogue states that developing a nuclear arsenal is the surest way to force concessions from Washington.

Christopher Hill, the chief US envoy to the six-party negotiations, said in Japan today that all the parties had received a copy of the declaration and would now move to verify its contents.

South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yu Myung-Hwan said the parties - the two Koreas, the United States, Russia, China and Japan - were holding consultations about a new meeting, with a target date of early July.

North Korea’s disclosure of its nuclear activities could mark a breakthrough in relations both with its democratic neighbour South Korea and with Western powers such as the United States.

But there were signs today that both Seoul and Washington would take a cautious approach towards warming ties.

North Korea has a history of failing to implement agreements, or failing to live up to their provisions. More hitches on denuclearisation may be in store despite this week’s progress.

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, told reporters at G8 talks in Japan that "serious questions" still remained.

"The North Koreans have already made available thousands of pages of documentation on the Yongbyon reactor. We also need access to the reactor core and to the waste pool to verify the numbers the North Koreans have already given us. That's an example of the kind of verification we expect," she said.

"We also have serious questions about uranium enrichment and proliferation questions. The President said yesterday he'd notified Congress of our intention to remove this state from the Enemies Act sanctions, but the DPRK remains under multiple sanctions regimes. There are Security Council resolutions, human rights, and proliferation. There are very many sanctions still in place."

She added: "Obviously we have the capacity to bring about future consequences if the North does not live up to its obligations.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t...

Bloody excellent Linz! I can't understand why the Brits or the Yanks or the Aussies haven't dealt with this piece of shit yet. Is there an actual reason, or is it just cowardice?

it just goes to show that while the ends in Iraq, the removal of Saddam, were moral and just the means were completely immoral.

Marcus, the removal of Saddam was never "the ends in Iraq", or even one of them. That's why it should come as no surprise that the US and the UK aren't interested in forcible regime change in Zimbabwe.

In fact, the removal of Saddam was a means to the (Bush administration's) ends in Iraq - and a completely moral one.

I must say, it was rather needle in a haystack territory trying to locate it, but did so in the end.

Rather poor show to only have 4 votes so far..gosh, you chaps, hurry up!

http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/

... all the jerking off over comparisons to Iraq—go vote!

"...Wouldn't it be great if we were still in Victorian times, whereby British troops would have marched in there without anyone’s permission, deposed Mugabe, instituted crown rule and enforced the rule of law?..."

Yes, it would ...gosh, those were the days

http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/

As I've argued before it just goes to show that while the ends in Iraq, the removal of Saddam, were moral and just the means were completely immoral.

Bush and Blair both lying through their teeth and kowtowing to the great socialist institutions of the UN and EU over Iraq is one of the reasons why nothing will be done to eliminate Mugabe. The US and UK government's subjugation to the UN and the South African Government on foreign policy matters regarding Zimbabwe is all but complete.

Another reason nothing will be done by the west is that the Government's of both the US and UK have bought into the argument of thugs like Mugabe that the British Empire was an evil, racist, exploitative, anti-freedom institution with African blood on its hands.

Wouldn't it be great if we were still in Victorian times, whereby British troops would have marched in there without anyone’s permission, deposed Mugabe, instituted crown rule and enforced the rule of law? Within a few years, Zimbabwe would again be an African economic success story and a beacon of liberty.

Of course there is another equally compelling argument. And that is that the west should just let these countries slaughter and starve their people to their hearts content. That way, some of them may eventually take responsibility and rise up against their dictators, and we wouldn't get blamed by Africans for having forced it upon them.

Submitted to Real Clear Politics go there now to vote for the article. Unfortunately you can't link directly to the SOLO submission, only the "reader's articles" page, so you may need to search for it.

10 votes gets the SOLO submission bumped to the front page and drives traffic back to here.

You need to register to vote, if you haven't already done so you can register here.

Yes, it is a shame what has happened to Rhodesia since it ceased being a colony, alas.

From what I understand it is a splendid place with a lot of nice scenery.

Hard to see what is going to happen next...will someone bump Mugabe off? ..will be simply die of old age? ..will their be a coup? ..an uprising?

http://nzcapitalist.blogspot.com/