The Herald (Harare)
Published by the government of Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe: Unemployed Busybodies Masquerading As Elders

Tafataona Mahoso

27 November 2008


opinion

Harare — WHILE former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo was dancing with Laurent Nkunda's war criminals in the DRC, Zimbabwe was confronted by three other former somebodies demanding to come here also.

These were former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, ex-US President Jimmy Carter and former Mozambican First Lady Graca Machel, who is now married to Nelson Mandela.

These three claim to constitute a humanitarian mission or commission without saying how they were chosen to constitute such a mission or who commissioned them on the basis of what authority and to accomplish what task!

The very same Anglo-Saxon forces who were behind the so-called UN Special Envoys in 2005 are behind the current mission.

People will remember Anna Kajumulo Tibaijuka and Jan Egeland who came here claiming to represent Annan's office and turning out to be "CIA jackals" in the service of Anglo-American interests.

If humanitarian tragedies are that important, why don't these "Eminent Elders" go to Afghanistan where the Anglo-Saxon powers are fully in charge and where more than four million Afghan women and children face a bleak and severe winter without food or shelter?

If Afghanistan is too far away, the elders could perhaps go to Somalia where "regime change" has made it possible for that country to go for 17 years with no legitimate central Government.

Why do they seek to divide and destabilise a stable country?

From the point of view of Africa and the Sadc region, Mrs Machel and Carter can be forgiven for not knowing what they are doing or how to do it.

Annan, however, is expected to know better because he is a well-trained and experienced diplomat. He is also an experienced African who by now should know enough about the tricks of imperialism and white racism.

Therefore, whether or not the Government of Zimbabwe eventually allows these three busybodies to come in, the people need to examine Annan's score card.

He became secretary-general of the United Nations in 1997 because one country alone refused to renew Boutros Boutros-Ghali's second term in that post.

The UN Security Council had voted 14 to 1 in favour of renewal of Boutros-Ghali's term but the US stopped the renewal because he was viewed as too close to the Non-Aligned Movement to allow the UN to be used as a front for the dismantling and recolonisation of former Yugoslavia by Nato.

The same US administration was instrumental in Annan's elevation as Mr Boutros-Ghali's successor.

The US and Nato got their way at the UN, proceeded to dismantle Yugoslavia, waged an air war against Serbia, and created conditions for the final secession of Kosovo from Serbia.

In celebration of this US-Nato colonisation of the UN under Annan, the then Chairman of the US Foreign Relations Committee Senator Jesse Helms asked to address the Security Council and was allowed to do so on 20 January 2000.

This was the first time someone from that US Senate office had ever addressed the UN Security Council.

This is what Senator Helms told the Security Council on 20 January 2000.

"They (US citizens) know instinctively that the UN lives and breathes on the hard-earned money of the American taxpayers. And yet they have heard comments here in New York constantly calling the United States a 'deadbeat' . . . They see the majority of the UN members voting against America in the General Assembly.

"They have read reports of raucous cheering of UN delegates in Rome, when US efforts to amend the International Criminal Court Treaty to protect American soldiers were defeated . . . Now, I grant you, the money we (the US) spend on the UN is not charity. To the contrary, it is an investment -- investment from which the American people rightly expect a return.

"They expect a reformed UN that works more efficiently, and which respects the sovereignty of the United States . . . So, as the representatives of the UN's largest investors, the American people, we have not only a right, but a responsibility, to insist on specific reforms in exchange for their investment . . . Most Americans do not regard the United Nations as an end in and of itself -- they see it as just one part of America's diplomatic arsenal."

After Yugoslavia, Serbia and Kosovo, Annan's most spectacular failure was Iraq.

The secretary-general failed to use the reports of UN weapons inspectors in Iraq to strengthen those powers and organisations who were opposed to the US-UK campaign to invade the country.

This failure is clearly documented in the massive collection of articles by Media Lens Media Alert, which is entitled "The Western Media and Iraq: Selected Articles".

Once Iraq was invaded in violation of the UN Charter and on the basis of lies that UN weapons inspectors and the UN secretary-general knew to be lies, Annan faced another spectacular failure.

His own representative in Iraq was killed, when insurgents against the illegal occupation of that country accused the UN mission there of being indistinguishable from the US-UK occupation forces.

The insurgents bombed the UN mission headquarters in Iraq.

Under Annan, UN offices were again attacked by patriots in Cote d'Ivoire and Lebanon, again for failure by UN representatives there to distinguish themselves from the imperialist interests of France, the US, the EU (in the case of Cote d'Ivoire) and the interests of the US and Israel (in the case of Lebanon).

Zimbabweans of course remember Annan as the UN secretary-general who, when he occupied that office, failed to stop the UK, the US, the EU, Australia and their white racist allies from imposing sanctions against Zimbabwe.

Zimbabweans also remember that President Robert Mugabe has used every UN forum since 2000 to appeal to the UN to stop the Anglo-Saxon axis from its illegal interference in the internal affairs of Zimbabwe.

We received no help from Annan.

But Annan did far worse than failing to use his office to mobilise the UN to protect Zimbabwe.

Annan's office itself inflicted much damage on Zimbabwe when it agreed to send Tibaijuka and Egeland on missions similar to the one which he now wants to lead.

The 2005 Zanu-PF National People's Conference in Esigodini condemned the behaviour of Annan's so-called special envoys.

The same conference urged the Government of Zimbabwe in future to be highly sceptical of any similar envoys and missions.

The behaviour of the two envoys was shocking because it did not fit the manner and style of UN diplomats as Zimbabweans used to know them during our Second Chimurenga in the 1970s and during the best years of the Non-Aligned Movement.

This new and strange behaviour by Annan's subordinates fits that of the people John Perkins calls "CIA jackals" in his book Confessions of an Economic Hitman. It fits the behaviour of the people whom Cuban patriots call "mules."

Mules are unsuspected people whose job is to smuggle someone's information or agenda through well-guarded doors or borders.

CIA jackals are spies planted in NGOs, companies and multilateral and inter-governmental agencies to carry out the destabilisation missions of singular countries or blocs of countries.

They are usually called in at the third stage of imperialist intervention, when the first two stages have failed to produce results.

The whole typology of intervention and destabilisation in pursuit of regime change includes five stages, the last of which is direct military intervention as we see in Iraq today, according to John Perkins.

CIA jackals are spy-activists whose aim is to cause social, political and psychological havoc by attacking the public morale and unity of the people as demonstrated in the last two elections in Zimbabwe.

The language of Tibaijuka's report and the language that Egeland used on the BBC after visiting Zimbabwe was not the language of UN special envoys.

It was the language of CIA jackals, intended to denigrate, provoke, insult, demoralise and divide the people of Zimbabwe.

But besides the language, there was also real conduct. Both Egeland and Tibaijuka betrayed their real agendas when they got to Bulawayo.

This means that the people who sent them believed that Bulawayo in particular and Matabeleland in general provide the soft entry points for clandestine destabilisation forces.

Bulawayo is the place where both "envoys" withdrew from the public domain into backyard and gutter projects and politics beyond the reach of the media and beyond the eyes of the public officials.

This was not accidental.

The NGOs and Embassies who have sought to sponsor divisive politics in the last 15 years have also tended to treat Bulawayo in particular and Matabeleland in general as if they were their pet projects and not local domains of a sovereign country.

Through Egeland, the British, the EU and America were trying to influence the UN to treat Zimbabwe differently from similar cases because here they had already gone ahead with Tibaijuka to condemn the urban ghetto reclamation and reconstruction programmes here as "genocide".

To remain consistent and in order not to embarrass the NGOs that they sponsored to denounce the programmes, these imperialist forces wanted the UN to install refugee tents in Zimbabwe's cities.

Such tents would serve as photogenic propaganda sites for global mass media and all the imbedded spies and journalists here.

Crisis Zimbabwe Coalition would get a boost to its reason to exist, since Zimbabwe would then appear as a country with a massive and permanent internal refugee population.

The NGOs could be paid to induce ordinary poor people to join the tent tenants just as many were also induced to trek to Britain and South Africa and lie about needing political asylum.

But such scheming on the part of the US and UK is delusional.

The overwhelming majority of the people of Zimbabwe are pre-occupied with land redistribution, resettlement and the agrarian revolution.

How do we know this?

We know this from Zanu-PF's 2005 Esigodini National People's Conference which resolved to condemn the two UN envoys serving as spies for Britain, US and EU forces against Zimbabwe.

Therefore the Government of Zimbabwe is to be encouraged to insist that the UN must not make ridiculous demands on member states which are not UN demands but are the bilateral requirements of a minority of white countries such as Britain, Australia, America and some EU countries.

Likewise, unemployed busybodies like Annan, Machel, Desmond Tutu, Obasanjo and Carter must stop making absurd demands on African peoples.

Government must remember that the Anglo-Saxon powers have not yet declared a truce in their media terrorism against Zimbabwe, which has been a critical feature of their overall propaganda war.

In that war, humanitarian intervention has been used most frequently. As Ludo Martens has warned; "This sort of campaign (which applies psychological terrorism under the guise of human rights concerns) is nevertheless nothing new and should not come as a surprise to progressive people.

"Military specialists have written many books and articles about the weapon of disinformation in Nato doctrine (for instance). According to those specialists, disinformation can be a weapon as powerful as heavy artillery.

"In the words of Colonel Trinquier, French specialist in anti-communist warfare: 'Today war is a whole consisting of actions of all kinds, political, social, economic, psychological, armed, and so on, which aim to overthrow established power in a country.'

"In every important struggle the facts brought to us by the imperialist media are a well-doctored mixture of lies, half-truths and real facts."

The so-called "Eminent African Elders" have been nominated by imperialism to try to reverse the diplomatic achievements of former South African President Cde Thabo Mbeki and Sadc in Zimbabwe.

Martens also cites a CIA specialist in the science of lying who wrote about how the US conducted its "black propaganda" against the people of Vietnam.

"Just writing that communists are bad is cheap. The art is (for the CIA to get certain forces) to commit crimes disguised as communists, that is the way to gain credibility."

In the Zimbabwean case, the US and UK have lost credibility over Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Graib Prison.

Their forces therefore gravitate toward those institutions, which still have some credibility.

The UN has a long relationship with the leaders of Zimbabwe. Therefore it is a most attractive target for infiltration, manipulation and even intimidation.

In fact, some of the manipulation is not even made known to UN officials.

For example, in 2005 some embedded journalists were supposed to come to Zimbabwe under the guise of covering our Senate elections when in fact their task was to take pictures and stage stories which could be manipulated and sensationalised in order to scandalise the UN humanitarian coordinator against us.

Putting homeless people in make-shift tents, as proposed by Annan's envoy in 2005, instead of building solid houses in real communities is typical of what is notoriously known as the "misery industry" driven by NGOs.

Relevant Links

The tents would provide the symbolic confirmation of the crisis outlined in Tibaijuka's report but impossible to justify on the ground where the people's pre-occupation then and now has always been how to get the inputs needed for a potentially good farming season.

Therefore, the best these retired stooges could do for the people of Zimbabwe is to get the US and the UK to lift their illegal and racist sanctions.

However, we have already said the UN and its volunteers are targeted because they are more credible that the British Foreign Office, the US State Department or the CIA.

The UN has a relationship with the people of Zimbabwe going back to their struggles against UDI and apartheid.

That good track record can be abused by a now thoroughly compromised UN system to achieve objectives contrary to those which the people were pursuing during earlier struggles.

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AllAfrica - All the Time
Author: ss_3conteh
Thu Nov 27 14:56:51 2008

My people have you observed one thing?The Herald and ZANU-PF are so confused that they are accusing everything in front of them as being western stooge even the great Desmond Tutu.The end is really staring at ZANU-PF.

Author: turnex
Thu Nov 27 16:23:55 2008

This post was deleted because it contravenes AllAfrica's commenting guidelines.

Author: jallohlaw
Thu Nov 27 20:41:52 2008

You mean, you wish.

What is so sacred about Desmond Tutu being a "Western stooge"? If Annan is, why not the Bishop, unless you prove the contrary, namely that the so-called Elders are nothing but African fifthe columnists.

It is only now that the STANCE of Cdr. MUGABE reveals its historical significance: rigid, uncompromising anti-neo imperialism.

Cheers.

Author: Aardie
Thu Nov 27 21:59:08 2008

What 'demands' did the Elders make? I thought that they just wanted to assess the humanitarian needs of the people of Zimbabwe.

Of course, the whole issue is about preventing publicity about how badly Zanu-pf has failed the people of Zimbabwe. Apparently, they think it looks better when even more people die through their aid blockade as long as they can suppress the story.

I think we all remember how Mugabe arrogantly refused emergency housing for the people that he lawlessly displaced from their homes in winter. He thinks that people would rather sleep rough in the open than sleep in tents. Of course, no exceptions were made for the sick, elderly of children. Again, this was just an exercise in persecuting his perceived opponents. How about when Mugabe refused food aid saying that the people of Zimbabwe had so much they would choke on the food aid.

Now with the worst famine raging with epidemics coming on as well, he banned all foreign aid.

Author: TD
Fri Nov 28 02:25:46 2008

I think calling elders names is really uncalled for in as much as you might not agree with them. I believe that the elders should have been given a chance to come to Zim for their humanitarian mission. However, after listening to the interview of Carter with Violet Gonda, one is left wondering whether the elders were really neutral as they claim. Carter goes out to attack Mugabe and shows so much support for Tsvangirai, which is contrary to the spirit of their mission which they say is purely humanitarian. Carter might have his personal views on the political situation in Zim, but surely, he should have been very careful or avoided commenting on the political situation given that the Zim government is of the view that their visit is political. It simply gives them ammunition to use. I think Carter lost the plot in that interview.

Author: the west
Fri Nov 28 08:19:22 2008

You will find Carter knows Mugabe will never let him near the country so his fangs come out because like most intelligent people around the world he knows how bad Mugabe and regime are.

Author: jallohlaw
Fri Nov 28 14:06:33 2008

These elders! Elders for whom?

Look, this was a bogus mission from jump street: any and all information about Western induced "conditions" in Zimbabwe is easily retrievable from the ubiquitous CIA operatives on the ground in Zimbabwe, not that there is anything wrong with the CIA's presence thereat. It merely demonstrates Cdr. MUGABE's tolerance for Western buffoons.

However, no mendacity will be allowed in Zimbabwe: at least, the CIA is not mendacious. That SHOULD be the standard for a valid visa to Zimbabwe FROM NOW ON, I would urge.

I'll bet, if I were I betting man, my last buck, that MT would not pass muster under the adumberated standard.

Cheers.

Author: chemicalaliofzimbabwe
Fri Nov 28 18:54:47 2008

Keep spewing this verbal sewage and pretty soon may be an Iraqi solution to save Zimbabwe isn't such a bad idea. This is as silly and meaningless a tirade as it is a page from the notorious Chemical Ali. Boy, you are crying wolf, but if the west should come after you the rest of Africa wouldn't sleep over it because you have no respect for the suffering Zimbabweans.


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