Educate the people: Nothing would be of more use to Africans than a long-term, comprehensive commitment from the United States to help them educate themselves at every level, from primary school through advanced-degree programs.
If you want to reduce disease, educate the people. If you want to break down violent rivalries, provide unbiased education. If you want to build economies, train workers. If you want to foster democracy, promote literacy.
In short, if you want to help Africa stop being a basket case, concentrate ruthlessly on education. Let the Europeans do the feel-good projects. Let celebrities give away granola bars. Stick to the mission of helping people learn.
Some African countries are significantly ahead of others in educational progress, but every one of them could use our help. Governments may be wary — despite their rhetoric, political bosses like to keep the poor ignorant (a rule that applies to our own inner cities as much as it does to Africa). But the people desperately want education.
When I visited Mozambique — one of the world's poorest countries — no one asked me for a handout. They asked about books and scholarships.
Good, no-nonsense ideas. (Link via
The first entry contains a letter from Sister Patricia Walsh of the Dominican Order of the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe and speaks for itself. The second entry is about "Stay Away" which seems to be a 2-day general strike at minimum and the quoted sections hint at possibly more. The bigger danger lies in how Mugabe will react should millions of people flout his authority.
Wretchard muses on the possibility that the U.S. has contingency plans should events in Zimbabwe erupt. I'd guess that the U.S. would prefer the kind of approach used in Liberia, but South Africa's Mbeki would be unlikely to go against Mugabe until the situation in Zimbabwe deteriorated far below what we could in all good conscience countenance.
1
Blogger in Zimbabwe: go over and post a word of encouragement. The Socialist regime is killing their own people.
http://www.zimpundit.blogspot.com
Posted by: maz2 at June 08, 2005 08:46 PM (WEOsB)
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Provide tools so that they can count to measure, illustrate to design, read to understand...and they will build. TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at June 09, 2005 04:28 AM (rmMzv)
3
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Zimbabwean pundit- another place that should be on the radar screen
http://www.newsbeat1.com
via commenter maz2 at Being American in T.O.
http://www.debbyestratigacos.mu.nu
Posted by: maz2 at June 09, 2005 07:26 AM (oVFc0)
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I agree with the sentiments expressed. Give a man a fish etc. I just can't avoid feeling cynical about the chances of Mugabe allowing white imperialists to be seen as helping his people while he is still in the process of destroying white Zimbabwe businesses. I understand that he offered ex-patriate white Zimbabwe farmers to return to 'save' his people from starving but that was either a hollow invitation or he is as batty as Idi Amin ever was. My guess is that he anticipated, as any sane person would, that his offer would be laughed at and he would be able to claim the moral high ground.
Either we will have to trust him to distribute aid, including the educational aid, where it is needed, as Debbye hinted at and which I think is not a possibility (for us or for him) or we will have to help along his fall from power. And then we will be white imperialists but at least we will have accomplished some real good for his people. We can certainly learn to live with ingratitude, gratitude not being the purpose of the aid, but we can't live with strengthening Mugabe's murderous regime with misdirected aid.
Posted by: mikem at June 09, 2005 08:08 AM (EzNXf)
5
Another possibility is he thought he could invite the white farmers back, wait until they get a good set of crops going, and then take the farms back again.
Posted by: Jay at June 09, 2005 10:52 AM (PuNh2)
6
Mark Steyn: Piss and Wind
Posted by quidnunc
On 06/09/2005 8:25:28 AM PDT · 7 replies · 314+ views
The Spectator ^ | June 11, 2005 | Mark Steyn
Analysing the wildly disproportionate anger over the Gitmo guard whose urine accidentally made contact with a copy of the Koran.
Robert Mugabe destroyed a mosque the other day.
This was in Hatcliffe Extension, a shanty town on the edge of Harare razed by the ‘police’. Mr Mugabe is an equal-opportunity razer: he also bulldozed a Catholic-run Aids centre. Indeed, his goons may have been entirely unaware of their act of Islamophobia. They just went in and totalled the lot, every house, every store, every building. The government destroyed the town in order to drive the locals into the countryside to...
freerepublic.com
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
Steyn says: "Robert Mugabe destroyed a mosque the other day."
Can we verify this report?
Are there other sources reporting this?
Steyn is reliable. How can this be verified?
Please post sources.
Posted by: maz2 at June 09, 2005 12:04 PM (pwwXS)
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Answered that over at SDA.
Posted by: Jay at June 09, 2005 01:16 PM (PuNh2)
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Vercingetorix said...
Mugabe is NOT a terrorist, rat; he is far worse, a dictator and a coward. At least murderers get to suffer the shakes when hell-bound vice rend their souls, to dictators there is nothing but elusive words and effusive rationalizations when triggers are pulled and steel unsheafed.
Black as a color of skin does not represent Africa and the point is beyond parody. If the color of skin matters so much ask a leftist whether G.W. Bush, representative of the American majority faith and ethnicity represents their affiliation. The representation of skin color is no substitute for the solid principles of democracy and civil society; anything more is the slaverÂ’s racism in photographic negative.
Yet the point that the predators of geopolitics must be fed, I think, is a false one. This is human nature, neither bad, nor good, but both at the same time. Humans can kill and we are damn good at it to, but we also share and in sharing have things of limitless value; our women, but families all, and friends, literature, sports, and religion. We are damned from the get go, but original sin may be polished away with discipline and courage founded in character, integrity, honor.
Still, if ever Africa wakes up from her fever-nightmare, she will not look to Europe for relief. Europe and the UN have long since ceded moral authority to comment on Africa.
Commenter at Belmont Club
Posted by: maz2 at June 09, 2005 09:28 PM (XDr2W)
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Soon after leaving, we crossed a Defender full of riot police and a police lorry full of "police" in plain clothes in the back, heading for Hatcliffe Extension. Caledonia took a bit of finding, and we were glad to be in a 4x4, because the last bit is quite tricky, especially coming back out up the hill - but when we eventually found it, we were all shocked. People are not spread around in open fields on the farm, as we had imagined. They are crowded together in the fenced compound immediately around the farmhouse. When we drove past (we didn't risk going inside) about a hundred were crowded around the verandah, and a man was addressing them with fist raised in the air (ZANU-PF slogan signal) - so we could imagine what he was saying!
The people are staying in tents, and the tents are right next to each other, not a bit of space in between. Laundry was drying on the fence, children were wandering around behind the crowd, and we noticed a police car parked inside.The main shock was the small size of the place - there is no way all the people from Hatcliffe Extension (there are still roughly 6000 - 8000 people staying there) will fit inside that compound, even if they all remain standing! And even before the Hatcliffe people started arriving, there were others already there from Porta Farm - and there will be many others coming from all over Harare. We are told that it is a transit holding camp, and people are only supposed to stay there 3 days for "vetting," before they go "where they belong" - and noone knows where that is or how they will get there. Fr William however reported that when he visited earlier this week, people from Porta Farm had already been there a week."
http://www.zimpundit.blogspot.com
+++++++++++++++++++++++
"... but when we eventually found it, we were all shocked."
"We are told that it is a transit holding camp, ... before they go "where they belong"..."
Horrifying: " a transit holding camp "
What will be their fate?
Woe unto Zimbabwe.
Posted by: maz2 at June 09, 2005 09:45 PM (XDr2W)
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June 10, 2005
Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are A Human Right
by Joe Katzman at June 10, 2005 11:48 AM
As many of you know, I'm from Canada. We have a pretty different attitude to guns up here, and I must say that American gun culture has always kind of puzzled me. To me, one no more had a right to a gun than one did to a car.
Well, my mind has changed. Changed to the point where I see gun ownership as being a slightly qualified but universal global human right. A month ago in Yalta, Freedom & The Future, I wrote:
"Frankly, if "stopping... societies from becoming the homicidal hells Mr. Bush described in his Latvia speech" is our goal, I'm becoming more sympathetic to the Right to Bear Arms as a universal human right on par with freedom of speech and religion. U.S. Secretary of State Condi Rice's personal experience as a child in Birmingham [Alabama] adds an interesting dimension; I hope she talks about this abroad."
This week, I took the last step. You can thank Robert Mugabe, too, because it was his campaign to starve his political/tribal opponents and Pol-Pot style "ruralization" effort (200,000 left homeless recently in a population of 12.6 million) that finally convinced me. Here's the crux, the argument before which all other arguments pale into insignificance:
The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.
And Zimbabwe is the poster child for that proposition. So let's start with what's going on:
Zimbabwe Changed My Mind: Guns Are A Human Right
http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006986.php
Posted by: maz2 at June 10, 2005 01:03 PM (bCz3K)
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Africa, the richest Continent on planet earth and we have to give them money for ANYTHING?, with such thieves and crooks that don't need it anyway, "administering it"? Wake up sheepl, tantamout to giving Bernardo a dozen 15 year old virgins to cure HIS "problem"? The U N is crying all the way to the bank "after" they steal and redirect the money to themselves as they always do, the African, "unneeded money" will once again allow the UN to give the middle finger to the Western Nations while they mutter "suckers"! I say let Africa look after themselves, and when they see the UN won't do it, they will do it themselves even at the risk of years and years of civil war? so be it. They have huge riches let them elect govts that will exploit those riches for the countries people, instead of corporations that is going on now. They are going to have to be given "tough love" to learn the art of survival, Look how have they have been encouraged NOT to grow food, and a country that is dependent on another country for their food supply is a hostage, and a starving hostage in his own country. NO MONEY FOR AFRICA, THEY WILL FIGURE IT OUT, THEIR HUMAND INSTINCTS FOR SURVIVAL WILL CLICK IN IF WE ALLOW THEM TO.
Stephen ww 2 vet.
Posted by: stephenmichaud at June 13, 2005 01:09 AM (bxOjK)
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