Sunday
In response to overwhelming popular demand (Julian Taylor can be a bit overwhelming sometimes) here is the text of the Marie Antoinette International Dead Liberty Award for the year 2005, which has been awarded by the Libertarian Alliance to Robert Gabriel Mugabe, and which I featured yesterday in one of these photographs.
Click on this:
I hope you (Julian Taylor) can read that okay, and that it need not be typed in, again.
So, since we are on the subject of Mugabe, how are things in Zimbabwe these days? Well, this story says quite a lot:
Harare, Zimbabwe, 11/17 - A magistrates court in Zimbabwe Thursday dropped corruption charges against President Robert Mugabe`s nephew, two weeks after his high profile arrest on suspicion of graft involving billions of dollars.Leo Mugabe and his wife Veronica were arrested on charges of illegally selling flour on the local market and exporting it to Mozambique.
Trade in wheat and flour, both of which are in short supply here, is controlled and exports are banned to preserve stocks for the local market.
No evidence, according to the magistrate. I do not suppose that lack of evidence is usually much of a problem, in Zimbabwe nowadays. But this case must have been rather different.
I wonder how Robert Mugabe himself feels about this. I do not assume that he will automatically side with his nephew. As I wrote here, a while ago, I was briefly acquainted with another relative of his, and I can report that the Mugabe family is not the proverbial big happy one. They do not all stick together. They quarrel. And Robert Mugabe is easily stubborn enough and self-righteously cruel enough to throw a relative to the wolves, if he decided that this was the right thing for him to do, just as he has decided that wrecking Zimbabwe is the right thing for him to do and will stubbornly continue with that, until death or ruin stops him.
In other words, this Libertarian Alliance prize will change nothing in Zimbabwe, nothing at all. But, future recipients of the award may perhaps be influenced by it.
THe EU should win next year's prize:
EU teaches children treaty is still alive(Link)
Posted by John_R at November 20, 2005 11:03 PM
And in the end, miserable utophia will somehow place all blame on the swaggering America cowboy.
.
Posted by susan at November 21, 2005 12:32 AM
Haha! Thank you so much Brian, however the bit I was after was the text underneath the heading, starting with the "When thinking of ways to describe ...". Unfortunately my eyesight is not quite as good as it once was.
Posted by Julian Taylor at November 21, 2005 12:50 AM
This unrelenting criticism of Mr. Mugabe reveals itself to be a jumping off point for future incursions by the capitalist west into a continent it once dominated. It is shameful that the man who was formerly forced into a submissive role as bastion against "encroaching communism" is now made the whipping-boy under the new scheme devised by the rightist in the current White House. The forces of Reaction would seek to upend any movement which kicks away the house of cards we now call "America's Foreign Policy". The foothold in Mozambique that the profiteers have seized has enraptured the policy makers in Bush's Washington and wet their "chops" for further conquest. Mr. Mugabe's resistance to this plot has shown remarkable restraint given the proximity to his country of the "foothold". I speak not as one who is affilliated with any political party or NGO but rather as a University Academic who does not "have a dog in the fight" but who does have an interest in standing against any power whether subtle or vivid and thus standing "athwart history and shouting STOP".
Posted by claude at November 21, 2005 02:30 AM
You know, the academic left is SO quick with the conspiracy theories these days...
Posted by Tony Di Croce at November 21, 2005 03:40 AM
claude,
If the "capitalist west" really wanted to make incursions into Africa, there's no shortage of excuse. Why would anyone bother to make up anything about Mugabe, who is in a land-locked country with a large army (albeit much of it looting abroad) and a friendly regional superpower next door?
The truth is that it doesn't matter to the western powers how many Africans are slaughtered by other Africans. There will be no invasions because there's no sufficient strategic interest at risk. That's realpolitik; it has nothing to do with capitalism.
Capitalism wants living, healthy customers and workers. It wants to sell things to Africans and buy things from them. African governments often stand in the way of that, and choke local capitalists too. But you don't get invasions on behalf of peace and prosperity.
There is strategic surveillance of the Horn of Africa, which is a flank of the Arab world. Otherwise expect actual intervention from the US, as opposed to humanitarian bluster, only if a Chinese-sponsored regime threatens an Indian Ocean naval base.
Posted by guy herbert at November 21, 2005 07:30 AM
" rather as a University Academic... "
Enough said. Not another word needed, the description is full, complete.
The Universities have been taken over by lunatics.
Posted by Jacob at November 21, 2005 09:20 AM
Claude, are you for real? Or is this David Carr having a joke?
Posted by Johnathan at November 21, 2005 10:29 AM
Interesting. I knew Kim Jong Il has his supporters in the West, but I thought Mugabe was utterly friendless.
Hello, Claude. You're a completely new species to me.
Posted by James Waterton at November 21, 2005 02:10 PM
"President" of Southern Rhodesia!
Shouldn't that read: President of "Southern Rhodesia"
Posted by enda johnson at November 21, 2005 02:27 PM
"Only someone named 'Claude...!' "
Oh, we wish it were only Claude.... lamentably, whether real or parody, the views are typical of a great chunk, probably a solid majority, of "University Academics".
Posted by Jacob at November 21, 2005 03:12 PM
I tend to agree with Jonathan's opnion that it's really Mr Carr indulging in a spot of leg pulling. I can't see that any self-loathing leftwinger would support Mugabe, even "University Academics" who apparently prefer to wet their appetites than to whet them.
Posted by Julian Taylor at November 21, 2005 03:42 PM
The moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the Left is now complete. Only university faculty in Europe or the United States have the fatuity to believe in that ideological nightmare.
Posted by Jacob at November 21, 2005 04:54 PM
University Academic Clause was quick to draw utopian fire against the swaggering American cowboy.
I rest my case.
After Zimbabwe is destructively utopianized, Venezuela is not far behind. My heart goes out to all the poor people suffering in serfdom's socialist hell.
Posted by susan at November 21, 2005 05:24 PM
Much as I loathe Comrade Bob, you discredit your award by referring very insultingly to "southern Rhodesia". Not even old diehard Rhodies go that far. Reactionary in the extreme and I use that word very deliberately.
Posted by Dave F at November 22, 2005 11:27 AM
Just a couple of points that most people (apart from "university academics") will, most likely, already know.
Robert Mugabe has been a socialist all his adult life. And one of his first actions on comming to power (as Prime Minister in those days) was to set the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade to plunder and murder members of the minority tribe.
It is true that he surprised people by not nationalizing property owned by whites in his early years - but no one every regarded him as a great fighter against communism.
It is a bit like Saddam. Now people is taught (by "university acadmics" and the media) to regard him as a former puppet of the United State and armed to the teeth by the Americans.
Actually the Arab Socialist party government of Iraq was always rather antiAmerican and Saddam's weaponary came overwhelmingly from the East Block (with a bit of French and German stuff on top).
Some intelligence during the war with Iran has been transmuted into "pro American" and "armed by America".
Posted by Paul Marks at November 25, 2005 03:15 PM
