zimbabwe..what can we do?

[scott wilson]

our troops have been deployed to protect oil reserves under the false pretence of WMD`S whilst british citizens have been dying in zimbabwe. For years the world has sat back and let this happen. I personally blame south africa and in particular the ANC for allowing this situation to continue and now there is a new presidential election which is being conducted under torture, intimidation and starvation...am i the only uk pasport holder that feels this is wrong or does no-one care?Be under no illusion ordinary people are starving in the once lauded bread basket of africa due to a leader that hitler would be proud of but what are we in the west dloing about this...NOTHING

 

[Shaggy]

Sadly dude you are right and also in an ideal world we should all do something about it, your best bet is just to do something organise something to make people aware then hopefully you can get enough support to get something moving, I for one would support you

 

[Htotheunit]

I thinks its disgusting, the world is a fu*ked up place and even if we do something about it, no doubt our troops will also be deployed elsewhere to 'defend' or 'find' things and the same will happen again. :x

 

[58herbie]

I agree it is not nice to see these poor people suffer to the hands of an evil dictator, and as an ex serviceman that went to WAR for another mans cause i see both sides.. yes we need to help peole but they also need to help themselves..

i went to war at Kosovo. we were based at Macadonia first and the people were great so friendly loved us, then soon as we started bombing and such to try to help, wow once Slobodan Milošević came over TV and radio and telling them how evil we were and what we where doing to them, which was untrue of course. They changed throw TV's fridges, shot, spat well just about anything really.

so my point is until some of these people stop being brain washed and voting these evil people in and help over throw the goverments how can outside help do it all, sometimes it has to come with in.

Also we have enough problems here at the moment with our own evil facist dictortorship....GORDON BROWN>>>

 

[ianscooby]

I agree it is not nice to see these poor people suffer to the hands of an evil dictator, and as an ex serviceman that went to WAR for another mans cause i see both sides.. yes we need to help peole but they also need to help themselves..

i went to war at Kosovo. we were based at Macadonia first and the people were great so friendly loved us, then soon as we started bombing and such to try to help, wow once Slobodan Milošević came over TV and radio and telling them how evil we were and what we where doing to them, which was untrue of course. They changed throw TV's fridges, shot, spat well just about anything really.

so my point is until some of these people stop being brain washed and voting these evil people in and help over throw the goverments how can outside help do it all, sometimes it has to come with in.

Also we have enough problems here at the moment with our own evil facist dictortorship....GORDON BROWN>>>

Totally agree how can someone not elected by the people be allowed to F**K this country up

 

[Clem]

We dont elect prime ministers, we elect parties, who can then choose there own leaders

Poor old GB, hes been hung out to dry, hes Tonies fall guy, he never stood a chance. Id much rather people hate Blair ..... he 'really did/does' deserve it, imo.

Politics? Enough already! :evil: :twisted:

 

[58herbie]

Poor old GB, hes been hung out to dry, hes Tonies fall guy, he never stood a chance. Id much rather people hate Blair ..... he 'really did/does' deserve it, imo.

no tony was GB's fall guy as GB held the purse strings, he was chancellor he screwed the coutry and planed these stupid taxes now they have come to haunt him..so tough..sh!te on him kick his sorry ar!e back where it belongs, in the gutter.

:x :x :x :x

 

[speedwell68]

Poor old GB, hes been hung out to dry, hes Tonies fall guy, he never stood a chance. Id much rather people hate Blair ..... he 'really did/does' deserve it, imo.

no tony was GB's fall guy as GB held the purse strings, he was chancellor he screwed the coutry and planed these stupid taxes now they have come to haunt him..so tough..sh!te on him kick his sorry ar!e back where it belongs, in the gutter.

:x :x :x :x

You got that a bit mixed up there, the chancellor carries out the cabinets instructions. The cabinet is headed by the PM. The PM is also first lord of the treasury. Tony Blair was a control freak and a political opportunist. Blairism was not the same as socialism. Brown is an out and out socialist, his true colours are beginning to show. I think history will see Brown as it saw James Callahan, a patsy through and through. He was a patsy for Blair, if Brown had any credibility as a socialist, he would not have supported Blair in Iraq.

 

[58herbie]

nope not mixed up, i can see what this guy is doing, crafty caniving plans. Hell not a Blair fan, and defo not a BROWN fan...god what happend to the Labour that were for the normal people, coz they sure as hell don't exist in this party be it blair, brown or anybody in that sh!ty party at the minute. they seem to be like the Sherrif of Nottingham....

Rob from the Poor to Feed the Rich..

1 question speedwell68 ....do u listern to PM question time??

anyway i'm now gettin bored of wasting my fingers on these useless pollitians..
:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

 

[Gadget Boy]

Also we have enough problems here at the moment with our own evil facist dictortorship....GORDON BROWN>>>

I also Feel its Time for Mr Brown to Go ..I would like to congratulate him On well and Truly ******* Our country Up

Gadget

 

[Shaggy]

hahaha....well the global Market is not really his fault but there are issues he could of made a little better, well I hope when it comes to voting we will all use ours to do what we feel is right

 

[Guest]

"We're all Doomed!"

 

[Shaggy]

hahahhahaha "Don't panic, Don't panic"

 

[scott wilson]

Robert Mugabe: a beast created by colonial Britain?

That Robert Mugabe's regime has brought Zimbabwe to its knees is unquestionable, but the responsibility for creating that regime lies uncomfortably closer to home. Michael Holman, a journalist who grew up in the town of Gwelo in Zimbabwe, explains.

Missing from the acres of newsprint devoted to coverage of Zimbabwe’s deepening crisis, absent from the radio and television coverage, is an unpalatable fact: Robert Mugabe is a creature shaped by British colonial rule. And a century after white settlers established the racially skewed land ownership that remains at the heart of the country’s turbulent politics, colonial chickens are coming home to roost.

It was British settlers who, in the 1890s, occupied the country soon to be called Southern Rhodesia; nearly a hundred years later, London played midwife to the birth of Zimbabwe, hosting the Lancaster House constitutional conference. With an almost audible sigh of relief, Britain welcomed an independent Zimbabwe.
But its responsibility lives on. Between the arrival of settlers and the handover to Mugabe in 1980, the UK record was a shoddy one.

Three decisions stand out:

At the break-up in 1963 of the Central African Federation of Southern and Northern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe and Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi) in 1963, it was Britain that allocated the bulk of the Federal army to white-ruled Rhodesia. This gave the minority regime of Ian Smith the muscle to make a unilateral declaration of independence two years later, in 1965, and to wage war against black nationalist guerrillas.

It was Britain that effectively vetoed landlocked Zambia’s request in the early 1960s for World Bank funds to build a railway that would link it to the east African port of Dar es Salaam. The decision forced continued dependence on trade routes through apartheid South Africa – and rebel Rhodesia.


And it was Britain that reneged on the spirit, if not the letter, of a provision in the Lancaster House settlement intended to tackle the worst feature in the legacy of white rule - half the land was owned by whites. The UK contributed (in real terms) to the buyout of 5,000 white farmers in Zimbabwe just half the amount it had provided for a similar exercise in Kenya in the early 1960s – although its former East African colony had barely a thousand white farmers.


No one suggests that Robert Mugabe does not shoulder the bulk of the blame for today’s tragedy. Nelson Mandela has shown how leadership can transform a country. But it is this historical involvement in Zimbabwe that gives a unique British dimension and responsibility.


Of course, Zimbabwe matters for other reasons: the crisis is proving contagious, spilling over to southern African neighbours. Refugees head for South Africa and Zambia; Botswana puts up an electric fence to keep them out; SA dockworkers refuse to handle a China arms shipment bound for Zimbabwe; divisions between President Mbeki and his successor-in-waiting, Jacob Zuma, worsen; and there have been xenophobic attacks on Zimbabweans in South Africa.


And we should care about Zimbabwe not only because Britain’s past policies still influence events, but because we live in an inter-dependent world, where disease knows no boundaries; in which terrorism thrives in failed states like Somalia; because more and more economic and political refugees head for Europe; because a weak, misgoverned Africa will lack the capacity to play a role in the international, co-ordinated response essential to the success of any anti-global warming strategy.


Time is surely running out for Robert Mugabe. But the editorial writers who sharpen their pens in anticipation may be in danger of missing the point: they should be preparing not only the obituary of a dictator, but an epitaph for an empire – as well as a turning point for Africa.


Michael Holman is former Africa Editor of the Financial Times.

July 1 2008

Zimbabwe elections: special report

Have your say: what now for Zimbabwe?

 

[Tofufi]

Totally agree how can someone not elected by the people be allowed to F**K this country up

Like John Major? :lol:

 

[Shaggy]

The British have created a lot of mess around the world.

 

[Guest]

Good article in the Daily Mirror about what you can do (companies to avoid and products) to help with the fight against the injustice in Zimbabwe. The problem is its the really poor that get hit hardest but hopefully only for a short period before Mugabe is ousted.

I have a friend who lived on the Zim/SA border, he said his fathers friend had his farmland grabbed by Mugabes cronies and he was lucky to get out alive. He had permanently employed over 100 people on a decent wage before the land grab, now his land is just a dust bowl and gone to ruin. All in the name of progress :roll: .

 

[faux]

Thanks Scott

We can be so wrapped up in our own problems, petrol prices, mortgages etc that it is easy to miss the bigger picture and the effect Britain has had on the world.

I am not sure what we can do to support the common, everyday people of countries who just like us seem to have little or no effect on government policy or rule.

I certainly feel very strongly about a number of issues abroad and at home but also feel helpless with what to do to install change.

It is sometimes easier to hide away in our lives where the problems have a direct effect, concentrating on families and hobbies etc to ease the burden.

"Life's a piece of ****, when you look at it"

 

[Guest]

"Life's a piece of ****, when you look at it"

if were honest, we've never had it so good!

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing. (and drive Classic VWs)
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

:wink:

 

[faux]

"Life's a piece of ****, when you look at it"

if were honest, we've never had it so good!

If life seems jolly rotten
There's something you've forgotten
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing. (and drive Classic VWs)
When you're feeling in the dumps
Don't be silly chumps
Just purse your lips and whistle - that's the thing.

And...always look on the bright side of life...
Always look on the light side of life...

:wink:

I'm glad you understood my irony! :wink: