Sunday - April 19, 2009
Display it with pride
Posted by Drew458
on 04/19/2009 at 01:31 PM
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Permalink • Friday - April 17, 2009
What the MSM forget to mention
10 days from now is the 48th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs invasion. With just a little active support from the USA, the expatriate soldiers of Brigade 2506 could have taken the island back from Castro and communist tyranny. Instead, JFK chickened out and left them to die. Naval support was on hand and ready to fight. Air cover was on hand and ready to fight. It would have been a turkey shoot. And he chickened out.
Val Pietro over at Babalu Blog has more, and there is an excellent essay over at American Thinker.
As far as I’m concerned, we owe Cuba. Not the government in power there. The people. We owe them freedom. Is Obama going to give it to them by sending them cell phones and Kentucky Fried Chicken? Somehow I have my doubts.
Posted by Drew458
on 04/17/2009 at 03:52 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - April 08, 2009
The speech by the man the UK govt. refused to allow into the country. FREE in the USA!
This is a very long speech running 27 minutes.
The speaker is Geert Wilders, who the left wing socialist islamic appeasers in the govt. of the UK refused to allow into this country.
It’s okay to let in criminals with loooong records of violent crime, it’s ok to allow plane hijackers into the country and then support them with benefits, it’s fine and okay to allow hate preaching muslims to collect huge benefits from the public purse. They’re okay with all that.
But woe to anyone with comments that are openly negative with regard to the religion of peace.
Mr. Wilders is Dutch as most of you know. He heads the Freedom Party in his country which has gained strength over the last couple of years.
But he is not the greatest public speaker in the world. He is not an orator, and that’s unfortunate for our side. But no matter. Hear what he has to say. There’s a lot you already know. But stay with it. It is worth listening to.
He was addressing a group in California on April 4th.
Too hot and too controversial for appeasers here in the UK.
America opened it’s doors and said welkom !
To whatever patriots are left out there reading this here in the UK, this is the man and the speech that YOUR government would not allow in the House of Lords or even in your country. This is what they didn’t want the house to hear or you to get wind of.
I can’t vote but I hope that those of you who can, will remember at the next election. And hope it might make a difference.
H/T to IFPS International Free Press Society
Posted by peiper
on 04/08/2009 at 01:33 PM
Filed Under: • International • RoPMA • Tyrants and Dictators • War On Terror •
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Permalink • Mother stopped buying DVD because she was with her underage children. More UK, PC
This story is a week or two old but other things have been happening so fast I just couldn’t post it earlier.
Thing about this is, the IDIOT cashier “ASSUMED” the mom was buying a racy video (No, not porn) for kids. Why and by what right does a store employee have to assume any such thing?
You’re in a market that also sells videos as many do. So you grab it and put it in your basket and some total officious jerk has the authority with no proof, to deny the purchase?
And what really gets me about this is that even though in the end a supervisor allowed the sale, the store says the cashier did the right thing.
NO the cashier did NOT.
What the cashier did with no proof whatever, is assume that mom was guilty of supplying her kiddie with a movie that had one of those not for under 16s attached to it.
This is another example of the country gone to the fuckin PC dogs!
And what’s really so damn frustrating when all is said and done, is that people are powerless to haul off and smack the officious offender in the chops. Ya know, I’d be willing to bet it would only take once or 2wice and others of like intrusive mindset would become worried enough about their own well being, that you’d begin to see a change in attitudes.
Not that I am at all in favor of exposing kids to adult material. I am not. But this was an adult. A mom out doing her shopping and some busybody making a decision for her. And it happens all too often.
A mother was stopped while buying a 12 certificate DVD at a supermarket because she was with her young children – but was still allowed to buy a bottle of wine.
By Nick Britten
The Telegraph
Karen Richards, 39, said she was “amazed and outraged” after the incident at her local Morrisons.
She was shopping with her eight-year-old son, Sean, and nine-month-old baby when she was stopped at the checkout trying to buy the film “Ladies in Lavender”, a drama starring Dame Judi Dench set in 1936.
The assistant said she could not buy it because she was with her young children, but then allowed her to buy some red wine.
Miss Richards, from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, said: “I could understand it if I had sent Sean in by himself to buy the DVD, but he was with me, along with my 9-month-old.
“Is Morrisons suggesting I should leave them both outside while I shop in case I want to buy something of a slightly adult nature?
“Does Morrisons not realise how totally ridiculous this is?”
She added: “The ironic thing is the staff member was quite happy to sell me a bottle of wine at the same time.
“It is further proof, if it is needed, that this ‘PC’ world of ours has gone barking mad.”
She said after talking to the supermarket’s supervisor she was eventually allowed to buy to film.
“I am all in favour of censorship and, of course if youngsters try to buy cigarettes and alcohol underage, they should be stopped.
“But with regards to films, I’ll decide what my son does or does not watch, not Morrisons.”
A Morrisons spokesman defended the checkout assistant’s decision and said customers suspected of buying an age-restricted product for a minor should be refused sale.
He said: “These rules are in place to protect our customers and their families, as well as the general public as a whole who, in the majority of cases, appreciate our vigilance.
“The DVD product in this case had an age restriction applied to it and the store followed procedure.
“We apologise if the customer felt the store was being over zealous.”
Miss Richards was eventually cleared to buy the DVD after a supervisor was called to verify her age.
Notice the “spokesman just couldn’t bring him or her self to just say they have it wrong. Oh no. That’d kill em. Schmucks.
Now then just to show ya. Here’s a short trailer. I never saw the movie, wife did. She says it’s kind of in the same mood of Jane Austen.
NO child would sit thru this, they’d be bored. The opening says clear for ALL AUDIENCES so I’ve no idea how it got a rating that says no underage allowed. Whatever ... take a brief view of this.
Posted by peiper
on 04/08/2009 at 09:44 AM
Filed Under: • Nanny State • Oppression • Outrageous • Stoopid-People • Tyrants and Dictators • UK •
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Permalink • Monday - March 02, 2009
Fascists in Action
Soldiers were ordered to take control of the rice mills, which include installations owned by US food giant Cargill.
Mr Chavez accused the companies of disrupting the supply chain by refusing to produce rice at prices set by the government.
“I have ordered the immediate intervention in all those sectors of agro-industry, intervention by the revolutionary government,” he said.
Government officials entered a mill owned by Venezuela’s top food company, Grupo Polar, on Saturday afternoon and said it would increase its output overnight.
Last month, Chavez won a referendum vote allowing him to stand for office indefinitely.
The socialist president, who has already governed for a decade, often radicalises his policies after electoral victories and has nationalised large swaths of the Venezuelan economy in recent years.
Venezuela’s rice millers association said its members were producing what they could with available stocks of the grain and had not been formally notified of Chavez’s order.
The former soldier warned he would nationalise the rice industry if companies tried to further interfere with supplies of the grain.
“I will expropriate them. I have no problem with that and I’ll pay them with bonds. Don’t count on me paying with hard cash,” he said.
Oh, and did you hear? AIG needs another $30 Billion bailout, so the government is getting an even bigger slice of their stock.
Si Se Puede! Yes We Can! That’s Chavez’ big slogan. Sounds a bit familiar doesn’t it?
Posted by Drew458
on 03/02/2009 at 10:17 AM
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Permalink • The Newest Narco State?
BISSAU, Guinea-Bissau — Renegade soldiers killed Guinea-Bissau President Joao Bernardo Vieira in his palace on Monday, hours after a bomb blast took the life of his rival, the fragile West African nation’s armed forces chief.
It was not immediately clear whether a coup was under way, and the capital, Bissau, was tense but calm.
Luis Sanca, security adviser to Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Jr., confirmed the president’s death but gave no details.
A bomb blast Sunday night killed armed forces chief of staff Gen. Batiste Tagme na Waie at his headquarters in Bissau, according to a state radio report.
The two men were considered staunch political rivals.
Guinea-Bissau has suffered multiple coups and attempted coups since 1980, when Vieira himself first took power in one. The United Nations says the impoverished nation on the Atlantic coast of Africa has become a key transit point for cocaine smuggled from Latin America to Europe.
Just hours after Waie’s death late Sunday, volleys of automatic gunfire were heard for at least two hours before dawn in Bissau and residents said soldiers had converged on Vieira’s palace.
Guinea-Bissau, a tiny country in West Africa, has had a long history of instability and numerous attempted coups since independence from Portugal in 1974. For 23 of the past 29 years, the country was ruled by President Joao Bernardo Vieira.
RISE AND FALL OF VIEIRA: Vieira came to power in a 1980 coup and weathered numerous coup attempts until being forced out 19 years later at the onset of the country’s civil war in 1999. Vieira went into exile in Portugal. A transitional government was formed and opposition leader Kumba Yala became president, but he was ousted in a 2003 coup. The country organized elections in 2005. Vieira returned from exile and ran, winning the vote.
MILITARY PURGE: The military is made up primarily of members of the Balanta ethnic group, who have long resented being under the rule of Vieira. He belonged to the Papel ethnic group, which represents roughly 5 percent of the population. After one of many failed coup attempts in the 1980s, Vieira set up a military tribunal and condemned to death several Balanta officers in an attempt to purge the military of his ethnic enemies.
COCAINE TRADE: In recent years, Guinea-Bissau has become a key transit point for South American cocaine. The drugs are flown from South America in small planes and then parceled out to dozens of drug mules that carry them north to Europe. The huge influx of money from the drug trade has been a major destabilizing force for the small nation.
Military coup? I doubt it, other than that the soldiers may have been the ones doing the actual killing. Bought and paid for. No, I’m fairly certain that this was the drug lords taking over. They run the country in all but name anyway; everyone in power is deeply involved with narcotics because that’s where all the money is.
And do you know what is going to happen? Nothing. Not a damn thing. The rest of the world will hardly even notice. The UN won’t do a damn thing. They probably won’t even bother to draft a mildly worded letter of protest. Who cares? It’s shithole west africa, that poorest corner of the piss poor continent where the primitives animists local populace hasn’t been able to get past absolute tribalism for 10,000 years. That same corner where never ending civil war rages. Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Niger Delta. All neighbors, all soaked in blood. Tribalism is the curse of africa, and it keeps the people in a stone age mindset. And that makes them weak. And violent. And into that weakness the drug barons come.
So tribalism probably fueled this conflagration, but the narco-traffickers are going to be the victors. Guaranteed. Even islam can’t save this place.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/02/2009 at 08:55 AM
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Permalink • Thursday - February 26, 2009
What’s coming next?
Dear BMEWS reader:
You have to read this post like the forwarded email that it is. Read this top part, then jump down and read the bottom part, then read the part just below the top part.
This essay was actually a comment left by “TPS” over at Pat Dollard’s blog back on Veteran’s Day just after the election, talking about Obama’s promised mandatory national workforce (the one with more power and resources than the military).
(the one he isn’t saying much about any more either)There was a response from the Obamba camp, but that has now been taken down. I checked. TPS’s comment has been snipped and circulates the email world. It is a blog post all by itself.
The comment was snipped and posted at Atlas Shrugs back on November 13, 2008. Pamela Geller, Ms. Atlas Shrugs herself, is not the author.
That said, now that it’s finally been sent to me, I get a chance to have my own response, which I wrote assuming Geller was the author. (but please jump ahead and read what TPS wrote first):
No kidding. But let’s not listen to Pam, as she is a crazy NYC jewish nutjob given to believing in conspiracy theories. She thinks Islam is the enemy. Silly her. She thinks big government is out to get us. Tinfoil hat and Wonderbra all in one; just shake your head and walk away.
Yes, Obama scares the shit out of me. He is destroying the country as fast as he possibly can, but he is not doing it alone. I now firmly believe that the economic crisis was no accident; that the setup was done for years by the left, and that the collapse was triggered deliberately. The Democrats have been out to turn this nation into a communist camp with them in charge ever since FDR, who was 95% a commie to begin with. It goes back further than that. The New Nobility that arose in the pre bellum south found that slavery was just too good to let go of, and that idea has never left their minds, even though members of the N.N. are now in all corners of the nation. Direct ownership of the lower castes is no longer necessary, because these people will gladly build the chains that bind them themselves if you give them enough goodies to ensure their complacency. [expect certain lesser narcotics like pot to soon be legalized, or at least overlooked in more and more areas. For the tax money you know. We need it. But even without the added tax revenue, keeping the lesser folks in a stupor only benefits those in power]
And now 52% of the nation ... all the losers, the lazy, the bleeding hearts, the America haters, the stoned, the corrupt, and the Naturally Superior ... are in charge.
Civil war may soon be upon us. Buy your guns now, stock up on ammo, have a bug out kit and a plan, and be ready to fight. It will be a nasty event, not just left vs right, but Conservative White America vs everyone else. I will not go peacably into the reeducation camp, which means I will be an early casualty.
The Great Experiment has failed. Or at least is on the very last razor’s edge of the abyss. The entire government needs to be torn down, torn apart, thinned out, simplified, and rebuilt using honest men. Good luck finding any. We have built a Utopia, but not one of freedom. It is a utopia of comfort and ease, not one of hard work and achievement. Bread and Circuses for the ever increasing masses; that is their RIGHT, from cradle to grave.
End Days are upon us. 12/23/12 is coming soon. With NAFTA and CAFTA and the unwillingness of our government to solve the Mexico Problem, the North American Union becomes more possible every week, and it will be a fascist state. For your own good, of course. Every day I see another dark cloud growing bigger that forces me to believe these things more and more.
Making this statement now puts me in the same category as Pamela Geller. I am a nutjob. Just like Churchill.
See you on the beaches, on the hills, and in the streets.
----- Original Message -----
From: XXXX
To: XXXXY
Sent: Wednesday, February 25, 2009 11:23 PM
Subject: whats coming?...........
Atlas Shrugs one of my daily reads.....absolutely spot on!
this article will really make you think, it reflects today with historic happenings.
“Something of Historic Proportion is Happening” by Pam Geller
I am a student of history. Professionally. I have written 15 books in six languages, and have studied it all my life. I think there is something monumentally large afoot, and I do not believe it is just a banking crisis, or a mortgage crisis, or a credit crisis. Yes, these exist but they are merely single facets on a very large gemstone that is only now coming into a sharper focus.
Something of historic proportions is happening. I can sense it because I know how it feels, smells, what it looks like, and how people react to it.
Yes, a perfect storm may be brewing, but there is something happening within our country that has been evolving for about 10 - 15 years. The pace has dramatically quickened in the past two.
We demand and then codify into law the requirement that our banks make massive loans to people whom we know can never pay back? Why? We learn just days ago that the Federal Reserve, which has little or no real oversight by anyone, has “loaned” two trillion dollars (that is $2,000,000,000,000) over the past few months, but will not tell us to whom or why or disclose the terms. That is our money. Yours and mine. And that is three times the $700B we all argued about so strenuously just this past September.
Who has this money? Why do they have it? Why are the terms unavailable to us? Who asked for it? Who authorized it? I thought this was a government of “We the People,” who lent our powers to our elected leaders..Apparently not.
We have spent two or more decades intentionally de-industrializing our economy. Why? We have intentionally dumbed down our schools, ignored our history, and no longer teach our founding documents, why we are exceptional, and why we are worth preserving. Students by and large cannot write, think critically, read, or articulate. Parents are not revolting, teachers are not picketing, and school boards continue to back mediocrity. Why?
We have now established the precedent of protesting every close election (now violently in California over a proposition that is so controversial that it wants marriage to remain between one man and one woman. Did you ever think such a thing possible just a decade ago?). We have corrupted our sacred political process by allowing unelected judges to write laws that radically change our way of life, and then mainstream Marxist groups like ACORN and others to turn our voting system into a banana republic. To what purpose?
Now our mortgage industry is collapsing, housing prices are in free fall, major industries are failing, our banking system is on the verge of collapse, Social Security is nearly bankrupt, as is Medicare and our entire government. Our education system is worse than a joke (I teach college and know precisely what I am talking about.) The list is staggering in its length, breadth, and depth. It is potentially
1929 x 10. And we are at war with an enemy we cannot name for fear of offending people of the same religion who cannot wait to slit the throats of your children if they have the opportunity to do so.And now we have elected a man no one knows anything about, who has never run so much as a Dairy Queen, let alone a town as big as Wasilla ,Alaska. All of his associations and alliances are with real radicals in their chosen fields of employment, and everything we learn about him, drip by drip, is unsettling if not downright scary
(Surely you have heard him speak about his idea to create and fund a mandatory civilian defense force stronger than our military for use inside our borders? No? Oh, of course. The media would never play that for you over and over and then demand he answer it. Sarah Palin’s pregnant daughter and $150,000 wardrobe is more important.)Mr. Obama’s winning platform can be boiled down to one word: Change. Why?
I have never been so afraid for my country and for my children as I am now. This man campaigned on bringing people together, something he has never, ever done in his professional life. In my assessment, Obama will divide us along philosophical lines, push us apart, and then try to realign the pieces into a new and different power structure. Change is indeed coming. And when it comes, you will never see the same nation again.
And that is only the beginning.
I thought I would never be able to experience what the ordinary, moral German felt in the mid-1930’s. In those times, the savior was a former smooth-talking rabble-rouser from the streets, about whom the average German knew next to nothing. What they did know was that he was associated with groups that shouted, shoved, and pushed around people with whom they disagreed; he edged his way onto the political stage through great oratory and promises. Economic times were tough, people were losing jobs, and he was a great speaker. And he smiled and waved a lot. And people, even newspapers, were afraid to speak out for fear that his “brown shirts” would bully them into submission.
And then he was duly elected to office, with a full-throttled economic crisis at hand [the Great Depression]. Slowly but surely he seized the controls of government power, department by department, person by person, bureaucracy by bureaucracy. The kids joined a Youth Movement in his name, where they were taught what to think.
How did he get the people on his side? He did it promising jobs to the jobless, money to the moneyless, and goodies for the military-industrial complex. He did it by indoctrinating the children, advocating gun control, health care for all, better wages, better jobs, and promising to re-instill pride once again in the country, across Europe , and across the world.
He did it with a compliant media - Did you know that? And he did this all in the name of justice and .. . . change. And the people surely got what they voted for. (Look it up if you think I am exaggerating.) Read your history books. Many people objected in 1933 and were shouted down, called names, laughed at, and made fun of. When Winston Churchill pointed out the obvious in the late 1930’s while seated in the House of Lords in England (he was not yet Prime Minister), he was booed into his seat and called a crazy troublemaker. He was right, though .
Don’t forget that Germany was the most educated, cultured country in Europe . It was full of music, art, museums, hospitals, laboratories, and universities. And in less than six years - a shorter time span than just two terms of the U. S. presidency - it was rounding up its own citizens, killing others, abrogating its laws, turning children against parents, and neighbors against neighbors. All with the best of intentions, of course. The road to Hell is paved with them.
As a practical thinker, one not overly prone to emotional decisions, I have a choice: I can either believe what the objective pieces of evidence tell me (even if they make me cringe with disgust); I can believe what history is shouting to me from across the chasm of seven decades; or I can hope I am wrong, close my eyes, have another latte and ignore what is transpiring around me.
Some people scoff at me; others laugh or think I am foolish, naive, or both. Perhaps I am. But I have never been afraid to look people in the eye and tell them exactly what I believe - and why I believe it. I pray I am wrong. I do not think I am.
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what to have for dinner. Liberty is a well-armed lamb.” - Benjamin Franklin
Now jump back for my reaction.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/26/2009 at 05:25 PM
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Permalink • Friday - February 06, 2009
A REAL “little Eichmann”
Hey Ward Churchill - fuck you, you withered old slug. Do us all a favor and fall face first into a real Indian campfire, would ya?
Venezuela’s Jews fear more attacks
As President Hugo Chavez intensifies his anti-Israel campaign, some Venezuelans have taken action, threatening Jews in the street and vandalizing the largest synagogue in Caracas — where they stole a database of names and addresses.
Now many in Venezuela’s Jewish community fear the worst is yet to come.
Chavez has personally taken care not to criticize Israelis or Jews while accusing Israel’s government of genocide against the Palestinians. He vehemently denies inciting religious intolerance, let alone violence.
But Venezuela’s Jewish leaders, the Organization of American States and the U.S. State Department say Chavez’s harsh criticism has inspired a growing list of hate crimes, including a Jan. 30 invasion of Caracas’ largest synagogue.
About 15 people overpowered two security guards at the Tiferet Israel Synagogue, shattering religious objects and spray-painting “Jews, get out” on the walls. Most worrisome, according to Elias Farache, president of the Venezuelan-Israelite Association, was their theft of a computer database containing many names and addresses of Jews in Venezuela.
Police are now posted outside the synagogue, and prosecutors said Friday that the security guards “could be involved.” Venezuela’s attorney general ordered them to court on Feb. 13 — two days before Venezuelans vote in a referendum that could enable Chavez to extend his rule indefinitely.
One week before the invasion, a Chavista columnist named Emilio Silva posted a call to action on Aporrea, a pro-government Web site, describing Jews as “squalid” — a term Chavez often uses to describe his opponents as weak — and exhorting Venezuelans to confront them as anti-government conspirators.
“Publicly challenge every Jew that you find in the street, shopping center or park,” he wrote, “shouting slogans in favor of Palestine and against that abortion: Israel.”
Silva called for protests at the synagogue, a boycott of Jewish-owned businesses, seizures of Jewish-owned property, the closure of Jewish schools and a nationwide effort “to denounce publicly, with names and last names the members of powerful Jewish groups present in Venezuela.”
With criticism mounting, Chavez phoned Farache Thursday night in a conversation broadcast live on state television, and vowed to guarantee the safety of Venezuela’s 15,000 Jews. He condemned the synagogue attack. But he also suggested that it might have been an inside job, and demanded that Jewish leaders publicly recant accusations against his government.
Now many Jews fear more trouble ahead.
Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Los Angeles, California-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, believes Chavez’s rhetoric “has encouraged this atmosphere of hatred which is now being directed against Jews.”
“His hostility against the state of Israel has a ripple effect,”
And “Ooogo”? You ain’t foolin nobody with your “look at me, Mr. Innocent” routine. You are just another hate filled leftist scumbag, a brainless despot, playing pin the tail on the Jooos, as your little banana republic slides even further down into the swamp. You are a tyrant. A dictator who supports terrorism. You are our enemy, Israel’s enemy, and an enemy to the world. You have fucked with the wrong people this time.
I think it’s high time that Americans had their own version of a fatwa. An ukase? Something that combines political power, moral outrage, and the angry hand of G-d into a worldwide smackdown of near-biblical proportion. Government action, called for by the people, because our “leaders” are spineless eunuchs. A contract, but more than just a hit. A cauterization. An elimination of all friends, relatives, associates, supporters, and sympathizers. Clean the slate. “Shenanigans” but about 10,000 times more violent than the South Park version. With fire. And shrapnel. Lots. Salting of the Earth may be involved as well. The Mother Of All Beatdowns. And I call for one on old Ooogo here. You can call it Operation Androcles. I’ll call it problem solving.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/06/2009 at 11:03 PM
Filed Under: • Stoopid-People • Tyrants and Dictators •
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Permalink • Friday - January 16, 2009
From silly to asinine
This has got to be some kind of world record
Zimbabwe is introducing a Z$100 trillion note, currently worth about US$30 (£20), state media reports.
Other notes in trillion-dollar denominations of 10, 20 and 50 are also being released to help Zimbabweans cope with hyperinflation.
However, the dollarisation of the economy means that few products are available in the local currency.
I wonder how many more spins around the bowl this country has before it completely goes down the drain? What’s left to fail at this point? What actually works in that nation? Even if they just took Mubabe out and shot him, along with the rest of the joke of a government, it couldn’t make anything better. Or worse.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/16/2009 at 11:54 AM
Filed Under: • Africa • Tyrants and Dictators •
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Permalink • Tuesday - January 13, 2009
Not Worth The Effort
A few months ago I posted on the utterly silly currencies being printed in that hellhole, and wondered at what point they would simply give up on the concept of money. Between then and now, not only have they revalued their money by snipping off TEN zeroes [10,000,000,000 to 1], the new currency has deflated just as much. So, in old money $Z100,000,000,000,000,000,000 is worth $Z10,000,000,000 in new money, which will be worth $US 1 by this afternoon. In August I calculated that the value of the ink on the paper was worth far more than the face value of the bills. Today it is billions of times worse. And they still cling to the concept.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe unveiled new $20 billion and $50 billion notes in an advertisement in Monday’s Herald newspaper. It said the notes were being introduced “for your convenience”. In December, the bank printed new $10 billion notes.
But each time a larger denomination note comes, prices shoot up in the shops even though local currency is so scarce that most demand that customers pay in US dollars or South African rand.
Zimbabweans are reeling from the inflation. The largest note ever in the country was $100 billion in August, when the before the bank struck 10 zeros from the currency. Then The Herald newspaper cost 10 new Zimbabwe dollars. Today the paper costs $15 billion.
Zimbabwe’s economy is in meltdown amid a months-long political crisis over President Robert Mugabe sharing power with the opposition amid acute shortages of everything from medication and food to fuel and electricity. A collapse of the piped water system has caused a cholera epidemic that has killed nearly 2,000 people.
Hey Mugabe - I’ve got a new currency idea for you. Here’s a million Zdollars that will hold it’s value:
Posted by Drew458
on 01/13/2009 at 12:33 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - January 06, 2009
Zimbabwe Going Exponential?
When I last posted on this, the number infected was around 10,000 with 300 dead. That wasn’t more than a couple weeks ago. Obviously nothing has improved a jot in that hellhole.
Zimbabwe’s cholera epidemic is picking up speed, with a total of 1,732 deaths out of 34,306 cases, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Tuesday. A cholera update dated January 5 showed a further 59 deaths and 731 new cases, up from 32 deaths and 379 fresh cases reported the previous day, it said.
...
The waterborne disease, which causes severe diarrhea and dehydration, has spread to all of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces because of the collapse of health and sanitation systems.On Monday Health Minister David Parirenyatwa said the epidemic could get worse as the rainy season develops.
The rainy season peaks in January or February and ends in late March. Floods, which can affect Zimbabwe’s low-lying areas, may increase the spreading of the disease.
6.3 million citizens are being fed almost solely by foreign food emergency aide. That’s more than half the population. The last harvest failed; they’d better pray for a bumper crop to ripen in March. What will happen if the aide money dries up, even a little? Or when the rainwater spreads the cholera to an area 1000 times as big? Goodbye Zimbabwe.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/06/2009 at 05:47 PM
Filed Under: • Africa • Tyrants and Dictators •
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 17, 2008
Situation Still Dire In Zimbabwe
No one shakes hands anymore in Zimbabwe, such is the fear of contracting cholera.
The country that was once the jewel in Africa’s crown, able to feed itself, heal its sick and educate its people to the highest standards on the continent, is now in a pitiful state.
Harare’s main hospitals are closed, doctors and nurses are striking over their meagre “Zim dollar” pay and the country’s water and sanitation services are tearing at the seams.
Manhole covers in the streets haemorrhage water because underground pipes have burst.
For many Zimbabweans, shallow wells with filthy water are the only means of quenching their thirst, despite the high risk of becoming ill. The cholera crisis which has already claimed nearly 1,000 lives, is the most potent symbol yet of Zimbabwe’s collapse.
A deadly cocktail of failed services has turned a treatable disease into a major public health threat.
Nine out of Zimbabwe’s 10 provinces have reported cases of cholera.
Eighteen thousand people have been infected so far, according to official figures, but that could just be the tip of the iceberg, with the World Health Organization warning that infections could treble.
...
Meanwhile, Mr Mugabe continues to claim that cholera is being used as a weapon of war - a pretext for Zimbabwe’s former colonial masters to launch a military invasion on his country.
At a public engagement just last week, Mr Mugabe declared that “cholera is no more… there is no cholera”, as news of more infections emerged.
And the downward spiral continues. Death toll is over 1000 at this point, with more than 20,000 infected. I have very little knowledge of infectious diseases, but I would have thought that those rates would be becoming exponential at this point. Perhaps the international relief efforts (clean water and medicine) are having an effect. Perhaps the isolation of outlying villages is keeping the disease’s rate of spreading down. Perhaps Mugabe is lying out his ass even more than usual; since a good part of the world press is banned, there could be tens of thousands of dead rotting in the streets and we’d never know it. Or perhaps those dead merely starved to death or died of AIDS, so they don’t count as part of this calamity.
PS - I put the image map in for JD’s benefit. I couldn’t resist when I saw the “great grey-green greasy” Limpopo River on the map. Image mapping is fun but can be hard to do by hand for the odd shapes. Lots of graphics tools can make the coordinates for you. Try yours when you’re ready, or Google up some free ones.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/17/2008 at 12:33 PM
Filed Under: • Africa • Health-Medicine • Tyrants and Dictators •
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Permalink • Saturday - December 06, 2008
The thinnest horseman rides out
And so at last it boils down to this. A murderous tyrant in charge who destroyed the entire economic system. Rampant crime, tribal warfare, the whole long list of endemic African problems. Pestilence spurs his foul steed as Cholera spreads; no government, no money, and no infrastructure means no clean water. Last to join the dark circus is Famine; there is simply no food left. Give Zimbabwe a year and it will be empty land. How terrible the price paid for tyranny, but at this point almost nothing can be done. It is too late.
Families in a once agriculturally rich land are living – and dying – on a diet of nuts and berries as food shortages threaten up to five million Zimbabweans.
A stick-thin woman, barefoot and dressed in rags, approached with her two young children.
“Please. We’re desperate for food,” she told him, and lifted up her children’s filthy T-shirts. Their stomachs and belly buttons were grotesquely distended by kwashiorkor, a condition caused by severe malnutrition that just a few years ago was unheard of in this once bountiful country.
There is nothing exceptional about this family. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of families in this region are surviving on wild berries or nuts that they grind into powder and mix with water, a weed called lude that they boil into a thin soup. They also eat insects such as locusts, if they can find them. Some even eat the moist inner fibres of bark.
Far away in Harare the Mugabe regime, and even Western nongovernment organisations, deny that Zimbabweans are actually dying of hunger, but here, more than 100 miles from any main population centre, they are starving to death.
The root cause was the regime’s seizure and destruction of white-owned farms, compounded by several years of drought. In 2000 Zimbabwe produced 4.5 million tonnes of maize and other cereals. This year’s harvest was barely 800,000 tonnes in a country that needs two million tonnes just to feed its own people.
The bankrupt Government pledged to import 800,000 tonnes, but has only imported 175,000 tonnes. The cash-strapped World Food Programme (WFP), which used to buy Zimbabwe’s surpluses to alleviate famines elsewhere, has to date imported only 260,000 of the 400,000 tonnes it promised.
That leaves a huge shortfall, and the WFP predicts that five million Zimbabweans – half of the population – will need emergency food aid by next month.
“What you have is a very fine line between chronic malnutrition and slipping over that line into something much worse,” one Western diplomat said.
And it is the poorest of the poor, those living far from the towns and cities – and especially in an area like this, which the regime considers an opposition stronghold – who pay the heaviest price.
A year ago we wrote that here, and across Zimbabwe, millions were surviving on a single bowl of sadza – a cornmeal porridge – a day. Today people here have not had sadza for months, and the doctor said they arrived at the clinic having eaten nothing for a week.
People go shoeless. They are dressed in rags. They are emaciated, listless, despairing. What little money they had was long ago rendered worthless by hyperinflation. It is the planting season, but they have no seeds – let alone fertiliser – and few have bothered to plough their tiny fields.
On the other side of the world, the UK’s Gordon Brown has decided that it is time to act. Or at least to talk about acting. He means well, but the time to act was 10 months ago.
Gordon Brown has described the cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe, which has claimed almost 600 lives as an “international emergency”. The Prime Minister said conditions in the African state had deteriorated to such an extent that the international community must stand together and tell Robery Mugabe “enough is enough”. The disease epidemic has so far killed 575 people and left another 13,000 sick since an outbreak in August. In a statement Mr Brown said there was a duty to give the Zimbabwean people a “better future”.
...
“The entire health system is collapsing, there are no more doctors, no nurses, no specialists,” said spokeswoman Elisabeth Byrs. Britain has pledged an emergency aid package to help tackle the spread of the disease, a bacterium infection which leads to dramatic dehydration and can prove fatal within 24 hours if not treated.Mr Brown said a “command and control structure” needed to be put in place quickly to allow international aid to reach people.
Here on our side of the pond, awareness of the futility may be more apparent.
Condoleezza Rice hit the nail on the head when she said that Robert Mugabe should have gone a long time ago. But having hung on this long, there is little sign that the “old crocodile” is ready to quit. His weary countrymen are resigned to his seeing it out until the end.
The international clamour for him to go may be growing louder, but in Harare, it simply sounds like one of those periodic crescendos that will soon fade away. Dr Rice, Desmond Tutu and the Kenyan President, Raila Odinga, may have increased their rhetoric in calling for his removal, but these are voices that have spoken out against Mr Mugabe many times before. The absence is of any new voices – or any that Harare has not long been deaf to.
...
The prospect of military intervention, even on a humanitarian level, looks more distant than ever. The violence that Mr Mugabe unleashed during the elections has receded. The pain inflicted on Zimbabweans now is the result of the country’s long, slow death and the crumbling of infrastructure and public services. Saving Zimbabwe will take years of rebuilding that can happen only with a cooperative government. Mr Mugabe has made clear he does not want foreign troops, even if there was a friendly country willing to send them. There is not.The survival of the Mugabe Government defies logic. It provides none of the basic functions of state – security, welfare or representation – and yet limps on. Declaring an endgame for a regime of such tenacity is always risky – the economic implosion that could finish it off has been much predicted but never seen. Another waiting game is under way.
This is all very sad. It’s a terrible tragedy, a horrifying lesson that Africa and the rest of the world refuses to learn.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/06/2008 at 12:35 PM
Filed Under: • Africa • Tyrants and Dictators •
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Permalink • Thursday - December 04, 2008
Circling The Drain
Just how much worse can things get in Mugabe’s stinkhole of a country?
Zimbabwean police ‘use batons’ against doctors Baton-wielding Zimbabwean riot police broke up a demonstration by doctors and nurses protesting against the collapse of the country’s health system on Wednesday, while scores of trade unionists were arrested ahead of marches over the cash crisis.
The country’s economy has been collapsing for several years, but now appears to have reached a stage where hardly a day passes without some new example of the consequences.
With the country in the grip of a cholera epidemic, which the United Nations said today had now killed 565 people, doctors, nurses and health workers tried to present a petition at the health ministry. [another news source says over 12,000 are infected and are spreading the disease to other countries]
But they were forcibly dispersed by the riot squad, who are well-treated by the regime and remain steadfastly loyal.
There was a heavy uniformed presence in the centre of the capital and one professional man said: “It was all over very quickly as the riot police are all over the city. It is quiet now.”
Three journalists, two from the Zimababwean weekly, The Independent, and one from the South African Broadcasting Corporation, were arrested as the demonstrations began.
In a protest letter the medical personnel said: “We are forced to work without basic health institutional needs like drugs, adequate water and sanitation, safe clothing gear, medical equipment and basic support services.
“Health workers can no longer afford to buy food and other basic goods and services.” Efforts by trade unionists holding a general strike to mount protests against the cash shortage that is crippling daily activities were also broken up, after the authorities signalled several times that they would not be tolerated.
The secretary-general of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, Wellington Chibebe, was arrested while addressing workers in the capital, along with nine other people, the organisation said in a statement, while more than 30 were held around the country. It said 10 of its members were “heavily assaulted” by police in Harare.
Hyperinflation is raging in Zimbabwe, with the official figure for July, the latest available, at 231 million per cent and independent estimates far higher.
Good old UNICEF is doing what they can, but at this point pretty much all they can do is truck in clean water to the capital. And there will never be enough of that.
Zimbabweans are already suffering from raging inflation, food shortages and a steady decline in social services – particularly in the education and health sectors. Now the country is faced with the total collapse of the infrastructure needed to prevent and treat diseases like cholera.
“Mainly, it’s the lack of capacity for the municipal services and the water authorities to provide safe water and refuse collection,” said Ms. Singizi. “At the same time, there’s a collapse in the health services, which has made it impossible to treat the high number of infections.”
For the moment, UNICEF is trucking in 360,000 litres of water a day into Harare alone. UNICEF and its partners are also providing essential items such as bars of soap, latex gloves and water decontamination tablets.
And now they’re going to try and ramp that up, with a 120 day program to try and stem what could soon be an exponential death rate. But it’s not just an uphill battle, it’s more like climbing a cliff under fire:
Zimbabwe has recorded negative economic growth for the past nine years, the situation is exacerbated by;
- a high HIV prevalence at 16 per cent;
- the highest orphan percentage in the world (one in four children are orphaned);
- food shortages -5.1 million will require food aid in January 09; and
- a steady decline of social services for the past five years.However, in the past eight weeks, the country has seen a total collapse of its education and health system. In addition, more than 11 735 cases and 484 deaths have been reported in the worst cholera outbreak the country has experienced in recent years. The net effect on Zimbabwean children has been no schooling, a serious threat to their life, lack of health care, safe water and reduced number of meals.
“Children in Zimbabwe are on the brink, and everyone’s focus must now be on their survival,” said Mr. Monasch.
Once upon a time, when it was Rhodesia, this country was the jewel of Africa. No more. “Africa wins again”. Mugabe will not leave office until the entire country is dead. Which I guess might happen around March. And all the aid in the world will just keep their suffering going; it’s never going to get better.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/04/2008 at 02:02 PM
Filed Under: • Africa • Tyrants and Dictators •
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