by Debs is dead
lifted from a comment
The announcement
current Zimbabwe government headed by long serving president Robert
Mugabe, which has met with both factions of the opposition Movement for
Democratic Change including the faction led by Amerikan
Enterprise Institute sock puppet Morgan Tsvangirai, appears to have
wrong footed the media led hysterics who have been building to a
crescendo screaming lies since Tsvangirai wimped out of the second
round of elections.
The media running coverage of this meeting, brokered by South
African President Mbeki, has been really unsure of what line to take.
An obvious sign of being unprepared is having no pre-prepped lines
to use to denigrate the current Zimbabwe government with. This was the
usual methodology; to pick on some side issue that plays to whitey’s
fear of Africans in control, then make it an issue by having a chorus
of unanimous distortions throughout the western media. No one ever
questions the veracity of a statement made by nearly every fishwrap on
the news stand.
At the moment, favorite in the past-deadline English media is to
discuss the meeting as if it hasn’t yet occurred. This to give time for
a consternation soaked huddle, called to get the ‘sound bites’ to be
‘read off the same page’.
The big talking point of the Associated Press story carried in this (NZ time) morning’s NZ Herald is unlikely to have traction as they say. It goes:
Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe for all 28 years since
independence and just last month declared election victory, appeared
nervous at the ceremony. Head bent and looking beaten as he stood
between two jubilant opposition leaders, Mugabe never once looked at
Tsvangirai during the hour-long ceremony. Afterwards, he shook hands
with everyone except his rival.
This piece of slanted ad hominem gossip won’t have legs if a picture is
really worth a thousand words. The par sits directly under a photo of
Mugabe and Tsvangirai shaking hands at the meeting. The same image was
in a vid run on BBC World. The BBC are completely dependent on others
for footage since Zanu-PF tired of their one sided tirades against the
president on the beeb. In the Herald story this obvious disconnect is
explained thus:
"Asked about it at a news conference later, he posed for journalists, giving Tsvangirai a limp handshake."
That complexity is just too hard to work. Lies spread by western media rely on a superficial analysis by the consumer.
Making peeps understand that shaking hands at a press conference but
not in private is dangerous stuff, even if it could be nuanced
correctly, in itself unlikely.
Readers forced to go beyond simple imagery may delve too far, as in: "Do you mean all the pix n vid of pols we are shown, are posed?"
But I am betting that the mention
of two competing factions within the Movement for Democratic Change
will be edited out of most stories and as for the Prime Minister of
Kenya Raila Odinga, his comment in the Independent"
"Robert Mugabe is an embarrassment to the African
continent," Odinga told BBC television. "He lost an election and
refused to move on."
is not only beyond the bounds of normal hypocrisy it is dangerous ground.
Readers may remember, as Zanu_PF does, that Odinga, at the time a
populist advocate of opposition to the neo-con attacks on the economic
well being of the people of Kenya, won an election
yet was forced to negotiate with the defeated government who wouldn’t
concede that defeat. This anti-democratic intransigence was backed by,
maybe even instigated by, USuk, UN seppo suck asses and the greed heads
So Odinga settled for the role of Prime Minister, a largely
powerless figure-head position whilst IMF and amerikan enterprise
institute darling Mwai Kibaki kept his gig as president of Kenya.
Readers may get lost following the neo-con logic which goes like this.
"When a humanist wins government in Africa we pay the thugs we had
originally put in control, to beat the humanist supporters senseless.
We call this tribalism. Then when the violence gets out of hand we
force the newly elected government to accept well paid powerless
positions.
This scam not only sabotages any prospect of change, it destroys the
credibility of the anti-neo-cons and cripples the momentum for a
change.
But when an anti neo-con is in power and wins an election, we
instigate the same violence ("they are all tribalists in Africa" is a
widely accepted meme), but refuse to accept the result of negotiations
put together by any broker who isn’t an IMF sock puppet. Even if that
broker is the democratically elected leader of the nation in question’s
long time friend and neighbor.
For those of us who have looked at Kenya from all sides, this latest
outburst confirms that Raila Odinga is competing with Mwai Kibaki for
the position of most agreeable western lap-dog. A sad day for Kenyans
indeed, yet what else can one expect, for decades this has been the
stuff which elections are made of in the so called ‘ great democracies
of the West’.
Incidentally the execrable Gordon Brown is prevailing
upon the EU to bludgeon the Zimbabwean people with another round of
economic sanctions, will this rapprochement between the political
powers in Zimbabwe prevent that? I’m betting not if Gordon can help it.
After all this has never been about the people of Zimbabwe, it has been
about England’s re-colonization of a former food source.
Zanu-PF will ensure as much as they can, that Zimbabwe isn’t forced
to relive the horrors of the 1990’s when it’s national institutions
were put up for sale to the highest foreign bidder. That is inaccurate
actually the national assets given away to carpet baggers with IMF
connections.
Even the World Bank admitted in their warm and fuzzily titled paper
Structural Adjustment and Zimbabwe’s Poor:
Zimbabwe’s Economic and Structural Adjustment Program
(ESAP) supported by the World Bank dismantled many of the controls
confining the country’s economy. . .
. . . 1/ the program did not reduce poverty and unemployment as its
architects had hoped. Critical fiscal reforms made slow and uncertain
progress, keeping budget deficits high. This created uncertainty and
shortages of capital for private producers, which delayed investment in
new capacity and job creation. By focusing on the formal urban sector,
the program restricted its ability to reach the majority of
Zimbabweans, who work predominantly in the informal sector and in rural
areas.
The part of this paper that really gets my goat comes next:
Two basic lessons are that: (1) macroeconomic
stabilization–particularly fiscal adjustment–is a prerequisite for
sustainable growth in employment, output, and incomes, and (2) sound
macroeconomic policies need to be accompanied by actions specifically
designed to assist and protect people who do not directly benefit from
formal sector growth.
Zimbabweans are starving and these World Bank technocrats are
dispassionate to the point of sociopathy when they discuss the problems
they have caused as if it were the result of a laboratory experiment,
which of course it was.
New Zealand had gone through exactly the same ‘reforms’ a few
years before Zimbabwe’s mid ’90s attempt, the voters there finally
managed to rid themselves of the technocrats responsible out of the
Tweedledee and Tweedledum parties.
Those appalling failures of humanity immediately picked up gigs with
the IMF and World Bank so they could continue their ‘experiments’.
NZ’s once enviable community has been on a downward spiral of gaping
income gaps and an ever growing ‘underclass’ (neo con talk for unwhite)
ever since the experiments. The people of Zimbabwe have paid a high
price for their successful rejection of neo-con subjugation but if they
can trade free of sanctions, then they should recover quickly because
unlike NZ, Zimbabwe hasn’t sold the farm.
The vast bulk of Zimbabwe’s resources still remain under Zimbabwean ownership.
So let us hope Zanu-PF have successfully pulled off their staunch rejection of the ‘new imperialism’.
ps: Apologies for the remaining typos and mis-spellings but if I don’t cut my losses I’ll never finish.