Zimbabwe/ Mugabe

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mayfair london uberrich shell corps own houses

putin dep mayor stole $ smuggled abroad w help of banksters in west; applebaum

https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/376-how-democracies-fail

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covid authoritarian:

...India is continuing to harass and arrest its most vocal critics, raising fears that the government will use the pandemic chaos to suppress protests and civil society activism in the foreseeable future.

Zimbabwe

Paul Friesen, University of Notre Dame, and Chipo Dendere, Wellesley University

While reported cases of coronavirus are not yet significant in Africa, the pandemic is already emboldening several governments on the continent to flex their state powers in the name of protecting citizens.

Zimbabwe’s authoritarian-leaning government already inspired fear and distrust among citizens. Then, on March 30, President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who came to power after the removal of Robert Mugabe in 2017, issued a sudden and strict 21-day lockdown, clamping down on nearly all movement and activities.

The total shutdown comes with no government bailout, and Zimbabwe is already in economic crisis.

Fear of government forces has so far proven effective in motivating most of Zimbabwe’s 15 million people to stay at home. But inevitably, many people will have to violate the lockdown to get food, water and other basics goods that are hard to access even in normal times.

Mnangagwa recently ousted Zimbabwe’s health minister as COVID-19 czar and appointed his military hardliner vice president to manage the pandemic response. That was a signal about the potential for use of force. With Zimbabwe forcing citizens to choose between eating and facing the wrath of the military, there could be a flare-up of violence.

Peru

Anthony Bebbington, Clark University, and Gisselle Vila Benites, University of Melbourne

Peruvian President Martín Vizcarra’s rapid response to COVID-19 – which includes a $26 billion stimulus package to aid both businesses and families passed shortly after a March 15 state of emergency decree – has been praised domestically and internationally for its sensitivity to the social and economic impacts of the pandemic.

Vizcarra is unlikely to use coronavirus to consolidate authoritarian power, but Peru’s history of impunity during previous states of emergency raises other concerns.

Civil society, human rights groups, journalists and even the Justice Ministry have flagged, for example, the risks of a new “police protection” law passed by the president of the Congress, Manuel Merino. It exempts officers and soldiers from criminal responsibility for any death or injury caused during the state of emergency.

Peru’s government also has a track record of using emergency powers to protect its mining industry against protests. Mined silver, gold, copper, zinc and other precious metals account for 12% of Peru’s gross domestic product, though many local people and environmental groups oppose these massive projects.

The possibility that the COVID-19 state of emergency could be abused by Peruvian police and mining elites to repress civil liberties merits monitoring.

United States...

reason bs cato

http://reason.com/archives/2016/02/16/global-warming-fund-a-slush-fund-for-wor

http://www.globalpossibilities.org/the-drought-you-havent-heard-about-is-causing-crisis-in-africa/

south, zimbabwe

The worst drought in almost a decade has decimated agriculture in southern Africa, leaving 1 in 10 people in the region at risk of going hungry.

The drought contributed to massive crop failures, including in South Africa which ordinarily produces 40 percent of the region’s corn. The country had to import the crop earlier this year, after it faced the worst drought since 1992.

The regional drought crisis has raised fears of renewed chaos in Zimbabwe, just as it was beginning to emerge from years of economic turmoil. The World Food Program warnedthis week that 1.5 million Zimbabweans will face food shortages after the production of staple crops like corn was slashed by around 50 percent.

“What you will see is people buying less of everything else so that they can afford corn,” Zimbabwe-based economist John Robertson told Bloomberg News. “People will limit buying to corn and nothing else.”

Zimbabwean officials said over 20,000 people have fled drought-hit regions for more fertile areas, sparking conflict and hurting the region’s ecosystem. The government warns that rainfall in Zimbabwe could decline by between 5 and 20 percent by 2050.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s land reform policies contributed to his country’s economic instability.

Zimbabwe came close to economic collapse after 2000, in part because of 91-year-old President Robert Mugabe’s land reform policies, according to analysts. But after years marked by recession, widespread food shortages, and hyperinflation that reached a billion percent, the country experienced modest economic growth in recent years. Food output rose by 82 percent in 2013-2014 from the previous year.

Now these gains risk being wiped out by the drought and other negative factors, including lower commodity prices. Zimbabwe cut its economic growth forecast from 3.2 percent to 1.5 percent last month.

Zimbabwe is facing food short shortages due to the regional drought in southern Africa.

“Everyone is very much dreading a return to 2008, which was the era of meltdown and hyperinflation,” Stephen Chan, international relations professor at the U.K.’s School of Oriental and African Studies, told The Guardianafter a recent trip to Zimbabwe. Chan explained that while hyperinflation is unlikely to return now that Zimbabwe is using the U.S. dollar and other foreign currencies, there is mounting pressure on Mugabe to attract more investment and tackle’s the country’s debt.

Yet experts warn of more drought and food shortages across southern Africa, as climate change disrupts rainfall and temperature patterns. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said last year that climate change has already had a negative impact on agriculture around the world.

In a major coup for Jeb Bush, leading evangelical attorney Jordan Sekulow announced Friday that he had signed on as a senior adviser to the former Florida governor’s Right to Rise political action committee, boosting Bush’s bid to woo socially conservative voters as he embarks on an all-but-certain campaign for the presidency in 2016. The 32-year-old Sekulow, who helms the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), will act as an emissary between Bush and a decidedly skeptical GOP base. In a statement provided to the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Sekulow pronounced himself “excited to begin a conversation with conservatives about Governor Bush’s pro-life, pro-family, tax-cutting record in Florida and the ideas we need to put into action to give every American a chance to rise up.” But while Sekulow’s credibility in conservative circles will likely prove an asset for the Bush campaign, he has also been at the forefront of his organization’s work to keep homosexuality criminalized in Africa, opposed abortion even when a mother’s health is endangered, and espoused incendiary anti-Muslim views, a record that hardly conveys the “inclusive conservative” message his candidate professes to support.

A former operative for the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, Sekulow is now executive director at ACLJ, an organization founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to serve as a conservative counterweight to the American Civil Liberties Union. Sekulow’s father Jay, also a prominent social conservative, is ACLJ’s chief counsel. As father and son aided Romney’s second presidential bid in 2012, the pair came under scrutiny after Mother Jones highlighted their international work to criminalize abortion and homosexuality — work that has expanded the ACLJ’s tentacles everywhere from Kenya and Zimbabwe to France and Putin’s Russia.

Jordan Sekulow has been particularly instrumental in ACLJ’s African campaigns. Under his tutelage, the organization established the East African Center for Law and Justice in 2009, as Kenya prepared to debate a new constitutional framework. Aimed at convincing Kenyan lawmakers “to take the Christian’s views into consideration as they draft legislation and policies,” the EACLJ lobbied to ensure that gay sex remained illegal under the 2010 Kenyan constitution. Although the draft constitution did not explicitly scrap the country’s colonial-era statute against consensual gay intercourse — violating the law risked a prison sentence of up to 14 years — the left-leaning Political Research Associates explained in 2012 that the EACLJ feared the new constitution would effectively jettison criminalization. The draft featured sweeping rhetoric opposing discrimination, and while LGBT people were not listed as a protected class, both the EACLJ and LGBT advocates interpreted the anti-discrimination clause to encompass the right to consensual gay sex.

Sekulow also railed against a provision of the constitution allowing abortions when a mother’s health is at risk; he denounced such a regime as “abortion on demand.” The EACLJ, however, failed in its dual efforts to modify the constitution’s anti-discrimination language and to scuttle the limited right to an abortion.

As Mother Jones documented, the ACLJ also sought to maintain the criminalization of homosexuality in Zimbabwe, a country ruled by the iron-fisted dictator Robert Mugabe since 1987. Unlike the Kenyan campaign, this lobbying campaign paid off, with the leaders of Zimbabwe’s short-lived unity government agreeing that homosexuality should remain illegal.

The unity government, established shortly after Mugabe’s fraud-tainted re-election in 2008, received enthusiastic support from Sekulow’s corner. In 2010, he traveled to the country’s capital, Harare, to meet with top officials in Mugabe’s thuggish ZANU-PF party, in addition to religious leaders and then-Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe’s 2008 opponent. In a Facebook post published after his visit, Sekulow called on the U.S. to begin a diplomatic rapprochement with the Mugabe-led government, and urged an easing of sanctions against Zimbabwe, which the U.S. had imposed in response to Mugabe’s persecution of dissidents and other human rights abuses. Warning that Zimbabwe was at risk of becoming a predominantly Islamic nation, Sekulow stressed the importance of engaging Zimbabweans so as to ensure that theirs remained a “Christian country.”

wiki

Robert Gabriel Mugabe (/:{m:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{uː:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{ˈ:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{ɡ:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{ɑː:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{b:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}::{iː:(style="border-bottom-width:1px;border-bottom-style:dotted"):}:/ *moo-**:{:{gah:(style="text-transform:lowercase"):}::(style="font-variant:small-caps"):}:**-bee*; Shona pronunciation: [muɡaɓe];^[needs ^tone] born 21 February 1924) is a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who is the President of Zimbabwe. As one of the leaders of the rebel groupsagainst white minority rule, he was elected as Prime Minister, head of government, in 1980, and served in that office until 1987, when he became the country's first executive head of state.^[1] He has led the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF) since 1975.

Mugabe rose to prominence in the 1960s as the Secretary General of ZANU during the conflict against the conservative white minority government of Rhodesia. Mugabe was a political prisoner in Rhodesia for more than 10 years between 1964 and 1974.^[2] Upon release Mugabe, along with Edgar Tekere, left Rhodesia in 1975 to re-join the fight during theRhodesian Bush War from bases in Mozambique.

At the end of the war in 1979, Mugabe emerged as a hero in the minds of many Africans.^[3][4] He won the general elections of 1980 after calling for reconciliation between the former belligerents, including white Zimbabweans and rival political parties, and thereby became Prime Minister on Zimbabwe's independence in April 1980.

Soon after independence Mugabe set about establishing a one-party state run by his political party, the Zanu-PF, establishing a North Korean trained security force, the Fifth Brigade, in August 1981 designed to deal with internal dissidents.^[5] Mugabe attacked former allies ZAPU in which the Fifth Brigade crushed an armed rebellion by fighters loyal to his rival Joshua Nkomo, leader of the minority Ndebele tribe, in the province of Matabeleland. Between 1982 and 1985 at least 20,000 people died in ethnic cleansing and were buried in mass graves.^[6][7] Mugabe consolidated his power in December 1987, when he was declared executive president by parliament, combining the roles of head of state, head of government, and commander-in-chief of the armed forces, with powers to dissolve parliament and declare martial law.

In August 2008 Mugabe suffered a narrow defeat in the first round of a presidential election but he subsequently won the run-off election^[8] in a landslide after opposition rival Morgan Tsvangirai withdrew from the race, and extended a hand to the opposition with the signing of a power-sharing deal with opposition leaders Morgan Tsvangirai and Arthur Mutambaraof the MDC-T and MDC-M opposition party.^[9]

On 3 August 2013, the Zimbabwe Election Commission said Mugabe won his seventh term as President, defeating Tsvangirai with 61 percent of the vote in a disputed election in which there were numerous accounts of vote-rigging and fraud.^[10][11]

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Position Country 2014 score Change from 2013 Change from 2012 Change from 2011 Change from 2010[9] Change from 2009[10] Change from 2008[11] Change from 2007

1 South Sudan 112.9 negative increase 2.3 negative increase 4.5 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

2 Somalia 112.6 positive decrease 1.3 positive decrease 2.3 positive decrease 0.8 positive decrease 1.7 positive decrease 2.1 positive decrease 1.6 negative increase 1.5

3 Central African Republic 110.6 negative increase 5.3 negative increase 6.8 negative increase 5.6 negative increase 4.2 negative increase 5.2 negative increase 6.9 negative increase 9.6

4 Democratic Republic of the Congo 110.2 positive decrease 1.7 positive decrease 1.0 negative increase 2.0 negative increase 0.3 negative increase 1.5 negative increase 3.5 negative increase 4.7

5 Sudan

6 Chad 108.7 positive decrease 0.3 negative increase 1.1 positive decrease 1.6 positive decrease 4.6 positive decrease 3.5 positive decrease 2.2 positive decrease 0.1

7 Afghanistan 106.5 positive decrease 0.2 negative increase 0.5 positive decrease 1.0 positive decrease 2.8 positive decrease 1.7 negative increase 1.1 negative increase 4.2

8 Yemen 105.4 positive decrease 1.6 negative increase 0.6 negative increase 5.1 negative increase 5.4 negative increase 7.3 negative increase 10.0 negative increase 12.2

9 Haiti 104.3 positive decrease 1.5 positive decrease 0.6 positive decrease 3.7 negative increase 2.7 negative increase 2.5 negative increase 5.0 negative increase 3.4

10 Pakistan 103.0 negative increase 0.1 negative increase 1.4 negative increase 0.7 negative increase 0.5 positive decrease 1.1 positive decrease 0.8 negative increase 2.9

11 Zimbabwe 102.8 positive decrease 2.4 positive decrease 3.5 positive decrease 5.1 positive decrease 7.4 positive decrease 11.2 positive decrease 9.7 positive decrease 7.3

12 Guinea 102.7 negative increase 1.4 negative increase 0.8 negative increase 0.2 positive decrease 2.3 positive decrease 1.9 negative increase 0.9 negative increase 1.4

13 Iraq 102.2 positive decrease 1.7 positive decrease 2.1 positive decrease 2.6 positive decrease 5.1 positive decrease 6.4 positive decrease 8.4 positive decrease 9.2

14 Cote d'Ivoire 101.7 positive decrease 1.8 positive decrease 1.9 positive decrease 1.1 negative increase 0.5 positive decrease 0.8 positive decrease 2.9 positive decrease 5.6

15 Syria 101.6 negative increase 4.2 negative increase 7.1 negative increase 15.7 negative increase 13.7 negative increase 11.8 negative increase 11.5 negative increase 13.0

16 Guinea-Bissau 100.6 positive decrease 0.5 negative increase 1.4 negative increase 2.3 negative increase 3.4 negative increase 5.8 negative increase 9.3 negative increase 11.8

Zimbabwe/ Mugabe

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