So, that Basket-Case Bob has spoken.

"We have that Howard - they tell me he is one of those genetically modified because of the criminal ancestry he derives from."


WTF?!


In all fairness, he did follow that statement with;

"As you know the history of Australia - that criminals and thieves were banished to Australia and New Zealand by the British and over time the theory of genetics has had its path."


Which seems beside the point, and insanely incorrect and contrived to boot, but I'll let you make that judgement for yourselves.

"When that land was still in the hands of the whites, even the snakes and lizards that were there were not Zimbabwean....those lizards were not ours."

Well fairs fair, making fun of politicians, especially our illustrious leader, Bonsai (10 points if you get that one ;) ), is a national past-time- and well-welcomed by all; but I swear, until I looked this up and found the second part of that quote, I was sure that Mugabe and taken a dive off the deep end. He called the man genitically modified for pete's sake.

Any thoughts?

Several. But most of them are obscene.

Mugabe's a thug. Even the UN (well, except for France, which welcomed him with open arms) acknowledges that he's a thug. He's run his country into the ground and will likely be the cause of hundreds more deaths before someone kills him or a Western power intervenes.

For further African musings, I give you Kim du Toit's (an ex-pat African) musings on the continent (http://www.kimdutoit.com/dr/essays/essays.php?id=P82).

Wow,

I read that article. That is pretty harsh.

Shralp - That was a pretty powerful piece. Have you seen any sort of rebuttal piece? If so, can you provide links? I imagine that we will hear from a few on the boards after they have read it and I will be very interested to read what they have to say. (Ragusa, Chandos, Mithrantir -- let's hear it. I respect your opinions and would be interested in reading a rebuttal.)

Yes, Mugabe has always been a thug. Always run a terrorist organisation (ZIPRA, ZANU etc) and run it like a mad dictator that he is. However, the UN had displayed a usual great deal of wishul thinking at the beginning. Dear UN, Ian Smith got his ass kicked by you, so you now have Mugabe. Enjoy. :rolleyes:

There's no way you are going to catch me defending the likes of Mugabe, no way. The guy is a ruthless dictator. But apparently not bad enough to make Shrub's "Axis of Evil" list. Yet, the list had to be short, considering who had to memorize it.

Chandos - I meant the piece that Shralp linked. I don't think Mugabe's mother would defend him.

I think the article is sort of silly hyperbole. I also think it is short sighted - and I can be equally callous in explaining why I think so: starving people don't buy Microsoft nor do they mine diamonds to put on our girlfriends' fingers.

It's in our own best interest to promote stability in Africa for the possible markets and access to its resources. 100 billion in aid world wide for 30 years is chump change when you consider that the US had 9 billion in just imports from Africa last year according to Bush during his July visit. Add in the fact that Africa is expected to provide 1/4 of all oil to the US by 2015 according to the World Markets Research Center in Boston and it would be really stupid to cut Africa off. Hell, even if the aid is just money down the drain the PR is worth it based on current and future returns.

That doesn't even go into pesky morals, terrorist breeding grounds, etc.

And do we really want the revolt that would occur with, "Sorry honey, I can't get you a diamond, we walled Africa off."

That article is way over the top.

While I agree that we shouldn't wall off Africa, Kim du Toit raises a good point. Every attempt to fix things has gone awry there. Now I believe that this is because there are too many warlord and tribal factions there. In Europe/the West there were several "uniting" Empires that more or less crushed the little tribes and ended the majority of warlords. But because of Western "intervention" there is no one warlord that is able to rise up and crush the others. This can be viewed as being either good or bad, however you want to look at it. While I would never ever reccommend walling off Africa and I appreciate the attempts to fix it, I myself, won't. I actually do consider Africa to be a bit of a lost cause and I figure help the people you actually CAN help. Maybe someday it won't be as disastrous out there and maybe in order to reach that point, it needs lots of help but good luck to anyone trying because it hasn't seemed to work yet.

And to get back on topic: Mugabe's an ass. :p

It really isnt that awful, as has been said in the another thread about aid to Africa the situation is improving and has been improving for a long time, albeit slowly.

@Silverwolf: There was concquering warlords in Africa that crushed all other tribes, they were called Europeans and the concquered and united a mere 100-200 years ago. It didnt work out that well.