Mad Bob Mugabe visits NYC (old but goodie)

[MKSheppard]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/13/nyregion/13MUGA.html

NY Times - 9/13/2002
"President of Zimbabwe Visits City Hall"
By DIANE CARDWELL

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe visited City Hall last evening, sparking a raucous display of 1960's-vintage pan-African sentiment despite the efforts of Council leaders to keep it quiet.

As supporters chanted "Mugabe is right" and "Africa is not an extension of Europe," Mr. Mugabe and his host, City Councilman Charles Barron, climbed the steps of City Hall, hands clasped high overhead, surrounded by a phalanx of aides and Secret Service agents. They were there to attend a reception with about a dozen Council members, most of them black and Latino.

Many other Council members stayed away from the event and Mr. Mugabe, 78, who has recently become a focus of international controversy for his campaign to redistribute land in his Southern African nation by taking it from white farm owners.

Mr. Barron's chief of staff, Paul Washington, who began an introduction by wishing "peace and power to all people of color," said that the visit fulfilled Mr. Barron's promise to not only connect city neighborhoods with City Hall but "to bring mother Africa to the hall in which she belongs."

Mr. Barron thanked his colleagues who showed up to greet Mr. Mugabe. "It is not easy for us to take the stand that we are taking here today," he said. "And many in the city might be criticized, and many will be complimented."

Mr. Mugabe, who had spoken at the United Nations earlier in the day, has run Zimbabwe since the end of white rule in 1980. He has argued that redistributing land now is only fair because millions of blacks were forced to subsist on dry rocky soil after British settlers seized the country's best land during the colonial period.

Many Western officials agree with the equitable distribution of land, but there has been mounting criticism in recent months for his tactics, which include forcing whites to abandon their farms, encouraging blacks to invade white-owned farms, hounding journalists and judges and arresting opposition party leaders. The Bush administration recently called his rule illegitimate and irrational.

Some officials in the West have said that Mr. Mugabe, by ordering white farmers off their land, has contributed to widespread hunger in his country of 11 million people. Mr. Mugabe has denied that his policy is to blame, although the United Nations says it contributed to a 70 percent drop in corn production in Zimbabwe over the past year.

But Mr. Mugabe's attempts to undo the lingering traits of British colonialism have made him something of a hero to many other African leaders, a sentiment that was well in evidence last evening in New York.

Mr. Mugabe spoke for nearly an hour in the Council chamber, giving his version of the history of the struggle over land, referring only to a small slip of paper for reference. He denied accusations that his policy had led to starvation, while adding that a recent raid by the police on a Unicef office in Zimbabwe should not have occurred.

His comments were interrupted occasionally by applause and shouts of "That's right" and "Tell it." Mr. Barron, dressed in his customary Nehru-style jacket, this one trimmed in festive gold piping ("It's a festive event," he said), plans to travel with a Council delegation, at the expense of the Zimbabwean government, on what he calls a fact-finding mission in early October.

But despite those who greeted Mr. Mugabe with warmth, slogans and raised fists, there were many other officials who avoided the meeting, claiming scheduling conflicts.

The Council speaker, Gifford Miller, said that he would not attend because he did not want to legitimize a leader whom Amnesty International has accused of human rights violations, and then later released a statement about the visit.

"I have been asked why, considering my viewpoint, I have allowed the reception to take place at City Hall," it read in part. "I do not believe it is my role to try to deprive Council members of the space they are entitled to use. And I believe that any attempt to quash free speech — a commodity that is apparently in short supply in Mugabe's own country — is a terrible mistake."

Mr. Miller's press staff tried to play down the event, at one point shooing staff members themselves away from the reception, saying that no one from the speaker's office should be anywhere near it.

The mayor's press office was more succinct. "The mayor has no interest in meeting with Mr. Mugabe," a spokesman said.

[Dalton]

...OK, whatever.

[HemlockGrey]

The mayor's press office was more succinct. "The mayor has no interest in meeting with Mr. Mugabe," a spokesman said.

Futhermore, the mayor would like to extend a hearty 'FUCK YOU'

[MKSheppard]

...OK, whatever.

Mugabe is starving to death his country right now, and he is running
a brutal dictatorship 1,000x times more meaner and nastier than
Rhodesia ever was......

Remind me again, why Rhodesia had to be "liberated" from apartheid
again?

[Dalton]

...OK, whatever.

Mugabe is starving to death his country right now, and he is running
a brutal dictatorship 1,000x times more meaner and nastier than
Rhodesia ever was......

Remind me again, why Rhodesia had to be "liberated" from apartheid
again?

I'm trying very hard to not post flamebait...

[Sea Skimmer]

...OK, whatever.

Mugabe is starving to death his country right now, and he is running
a brutal dictatorship 1,000x times more meaner and nastier than
Rhodesia ever was......

Remind me again, why Rhodesia had to be "liberated" from apartheid
again?

Better no job and no food then to work for the white man.

[HemlockGrey]

Sounds like something my English teacher would say; she's currently trying to make us all believe that whites(except for her, of course)/America/Religion/Random Superpower of the Week are all utterly evil...

[MKSheppard]

I'm trying very hard to not post flamebait...

Flamebait? Mugabe is a damn MARXIST DICTATOR. We sent Kissinger
over to make Rhodesia knuckle down to that scumbag's ZANU-PF,
and now Mugabe is talking about NATIONALIZING the oil companies
in Zimbawawe, as well as a final war with the remaining 30,000 whites
left in Zimbawawe.....this guy is a fucking little Hitler, but nothing is
done because he's a black "liberator"

[RedImperator]

Mugabe is a shit, but he's not a unique shit. Almost every post-colonial leader in Africa rushed to suck Moscow's dick as soon as the Europeans were out, and the entire continent has been circling the drain for the last forty years. Marxism failed everywhere else in the world, yet people like Mugabe's apologists in the West keep trying to bury that unhappy little fact because it would conflict with their leftist worldview. Better to blame the Evil Capitalist Exploiters and let 600 million people continue to suffer than to change your views, I suppose. Anyway, he's a hero to the left because he refuses to face facts and give up on Marxism. I'm sure when Zimbabwe collapses his supporters will find a way to blame whites and the West for it.