(NOTE: This entry guest blogged by Jaime)
The last three weeks have been saturated with Terri Schiavo / Pope’s Death news. While the American Main Stream Media has been focused on these two stories an injustice to democracy is occuring on the other side of the world. Zimbabwe’s “President” Robert Mugabe retained and strengthened his grip on power gaining 46 of 120 open parliamentary seats and appointing an additional 30.
His opposition rival, leaver of the Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai called the election a “disgusting, massive fraud”
Mugabe’s family all won through in their constituencies – his nephew Patrick Zhuwao, brother Leo, and mother Sabina Mugabe.[link]
Despite international scrutiny over the outcome of this “election” Mugabe seemed unfazed by his critics, laying out the political plans his newly gained mandate will allow him to push through.
In a post 9-11 / Iraqi Freedom world such an event would not stand, could not stand, should not stand with George Dubya Bush. Yet Mr. Democracy himself has been oddly silent in regards to the apparent steady repeal of Democracy in Zimbabwe. Dubya could not be taken away this weekend from his vacation clearing brush and chasing Arma-dillas with Barney to comment…he’d already broken into his free time to attend to the Schiavo matter.
Bush has had time to applaud Victor Yushchenko’s victory as he met with the newly minted Ukranian President today. He also poked his nose in Lebanese affairs .
Yet very, very, quiet on Mugabe’s election swindling. Mugabe has used many of the same fear mongering tactics and demagoguery as Bush is known for. Their media was also not so independent in its coverage of the election.
“Opposition parties were not free to campaign in certain parts of the country as some of these areas were no go areas…
It also said that Zanu PF “monopolised access to both the print and electronic media”. [link]
Mugabe seems to ape Bush’s style. Intimidation, media control, false mandates and vote rigging; a more brutal riff off the American election template. When our foreign policy has been rhetorically pushed to ‘freedom when we want it, where we want it, how we want it” a Democratic injustice in an African nation isn’t worth the attention of steroids in Major League Baseball. Bush is on vacation while the media is out to lunch. It now seems democracy in Zimbabwe has gone the way of Terri Schiavo, the Pope, and Mark McGwire’s legacy, yet one wouldn’t notice these days.
While the 24-7 Jackson-Schiavo-Pope-a-thon continues, I’m amazed at how often articles like this prove the irrelevance of the main stream media.
CNN Headline News was actually doing a segment today on the network coverage (ABC, CBS, NBC), and criticized 2 of the 3 for not having interupted significant amounts of programming to cover the Pope-a-thon. They actually put a big red X on 2 of the network symbols. Apparently, they only had mainly 1 segment a night in the nightly news broadcast. The segment implied that they disrespected the pope by not stopping everything for nonstop coverage.
Excerpt from Thom Hartmann at Common Dreams
Published October 2002:
Which led me to wonder: How would things change if Saddam, tomorrow, were to say, “I’ve decided to put my oil reserves up for auction to the highest corporate bidder, and, like many other oil-producing nations, all I want is a commission from the oil company that wins the auction.”
Once the stampede was over, I’ll bet the US would discover that there are dozens of dictators in the world more vicious than Saddam. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, for example, has engineered a cynical strategy of racial exploitation that has pushed six million of his citizens into famine today. Burma’s ruling junta has turned that nation into a slave-labor camp, where torture, executions, and terror are daily fare. And in North Korea, the policies of dictator-for-life Kim Jong-Il have turned a formerly fertile and prosperous land into a concentration camp where people are forced to eat grass to survive, and anybody who questions the great leader’s brilliance is executed. There is no shortage of “evil” leaders of nations – the list could go on for pages.
Of course, none of these nations have oil.
Has anyone considered the possibility that Robert Mugabe and Kenneth Blackwell are one and the same person?
The do look a bit alike. Their attitudes toward free elections are very similar. Their contempt for public opinion is identical.
Has anyone ever seen them together? If not, that might clinch it.
Our regime is *the* worst in the world in my opinion because it commits vastly larger and more deadly crimes throughout the world, cloaked in the name of democracy and compassionate conservatism. With the coronation of Paul "the comb licker" Wolfowitz to head the World Bank, the crimes will only become more frequent and hideous. This alone is another direct slap in the face of thoughtful people all over the world.
Supersoling, the World Bank, the IMF. the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and all these elitist people that are behind these deadly crimes are from all over the world.
And there is some indication that Wolfowitz has become a liability and he was sent to that position to get him out of the way.
Several mentions of Bush on vacation – doesn’t really matter much, since he’s not really running the country, anyway.
RE: Wolfowitz being appointed to head the World Bank. Does anyone really believe that Bush had any choice in the matter? I surely don’t. It’s more like Wolfowitz, et al, appointed Bush to be president. He one of the many faces of "Beelzebush", which is not GWB, it’s a syndicate..
Wolfowitz is a ridiculous choice, but I think the larger question is, "Why does Bush get to decide?"
He doesn’t choose the Secretary-General of the U.N., does he?
World Bank? I think a better name would be "Bank for American Global Imperatives."
I am so glad you brough this up, Jaime.
This was in my local paper, which covers a lot of important stories. The newspapers are not under government control. They think that not enough people are reading them.
Under Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s economy has dropped 50% and there is 70% unemployment there.
I read an article that put Saddam Hussein in the middle of the pack as far as brutality in the world’s current dictatorships.
Our regime is benign compared to many, many in this world.
Teresa #4, I have to agree with Supersoling at #6..
While we don’t have the kind of unconceivable atrocities here that other countries do, those other countries don’t have a strangle-hold on world markets either. And they aren’t out there rampantly fiddling with other countries politics/economies like we do. While "bush" might not be as "vile a dictator" as many others, our ‘government’ is one of the worst out there in that we praise democracy and hard work, but reward facisim and slavery..
The biggest difference is, our regime lets "us" stay out of being in total dire straits like those other countries because they know that on our backs is the only way to remain dominant in the global marketplace. If we fall to 3rd world status and unemployment hits 70% and our economy fell 50%, they’d not be able to continue meddeling all over the world, and would lose they financal foot-hold. If the U.S.A "fell", they’d not have anyone to protect their companies, since that’s about all our government does these days.
Would you be willing to go to 70% unemployment to have a government that didn’t meddle in the world?
I am not denying the vileness of our government, I am pointing out that the corporate cartels that rule the world are international.
The United States is a pawn in a much larger game. Bush, Wolfowitz, and the rest of them are getting orders from elsewhere.
Robert #5. I think you may be onto something.
Robert #9, and Horkus #3.
The March 21st DemocracyNow! piece on Greg Palast’s recent BBC report explains what happened with Wolfowitz and Iraq’s oil. (The transcript’s a quick read. You can still watch the video as well.)
We can make a pretty good guess about what would have happened had Saddam tried to sell off Iraq’s oil, because that’s exactly what Wolfowitz wanted to do. Big Oil stopped him because the move would have weakened OPEC (Wolfowitz’ intent), and brought down oil prices/profits, which was of course not acceptable to the oil companies.
So it seems that George W. Bush didn’t decide to remove Wolfowitz from the Pentagon, Phill Caroll, former CEO of Shell did.
Caroll was brought in as an adviser by the Bush admin. before the invasion. He makes his position plain as day:
Another amazingly candid statement in Palast’s report came from Robert Ebel, CSIS State Department, formerly CIA:
Interesting that he didn’t even bother with the b.s. about WMD or the supposed threat Iraq posed to the U.S.
Mark Lloyd, I read that piece and I was fascinated. That’s why I think the PNAC/neocon crowd is out of the game now. I belive that the Wolfowitz position isn’t powerful. Just an empty frontman job.
I hope you’re right, but I think PNAC is just getting started.
This piece in Antiwar.com is interesting:
>The Teetering Empire
Here’s another: Bush, the Frightened Man
Instead, in my view, he is really a violent, hateful and cowardly man…
I’m certain that we need an Open Thread. Attention, surrogate Brads!!!!!
I believe there has only been one democracy in human historty, and that was ancient Greece.
Teresa –
That’s because they’d thought about governance philosophically and had come to logical rather than self-interested conclusions. Like our own founding fathers.
Ours is a republic, as you know, not a democracy.
And it is really interesting how the founders set it up. The didn’t want a democracy because they wanted to protect the rights of the minority. That’s why they set up the three branches as a system of checks and balances.
The judiciary was created to protect that minority. They always had a recourse that way, and an advocate for their rights.
They news media paid little attention to this guy until he took land from a bunch of white rich guys and gave it to poor black guys. He’s been a deteriorating politician for a long time. Had he not provided land reform (Which he only promised 10 years before he actually delivered it) even fraudulent elections wouldn’t have helped him. The real offense to the mainstream press is favoring poor people over rich. He warranted little attention until that happened.