Any political system that fails to meet the aspirations of the people it seeks to serve, and subsequently denies those people basics of life should be trashed! Mugabe....., president of Zimbabwe???? He is simply a resident who is unfairly occupying state's top residence....! unfortunately, some SADC heads of state are pathological cowards. Viva, Bostwana for your forthright comments on Mugabe's tyrancy!

You just don't get it.

Botswana is AFFIRMATIVELY irrelevant; its relevance, a negative one, is the promotion of western imperial reactionary circles' INTERESTS in Southern Africa.

To YOUR UNHLOLY hail Mary to Botswana, I riposte: down with Botswana!

"Botswana is AFFIRMATIVELY irrelevant; its relevance, a negative one," Make up your pathetic childish mind!

Sorry jallowlaw for your pathetic squinted view of the situation in Zimbabwe. You are a paid sellout, whose is dripping full of blood of innocent Zimbabweans. You must be past any spiritual redemption to vomit the words you say about Zimbabwe.

To those who blame everything going wrong in Zimbabwe to Zanu-Pf, here is a very interesting book all Africans should try and read so that they understand policies followed by the US. The book is called COFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN, by John Perkins.

Former “Economic Hit Man” John Perkins on “The First Truly Global Empire” and its Impact on Latin America.

We speak with the author of “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” about his former work going into various countries to create a secret empire through economics after being recruited by the National Security Agency. Perkins discusses the policy in the context of the recent WTO meetings, the NYC transit strikes, and U.S. economic interventions in Latin America.

Well, as an—we economic hit men, basically in the last four decades, have managed to create the world’s first truly global empire; and I talk in detail in the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, about this and in various countries where we went in to create this first truly global empire. We’ve done it primarily without the military. The military comes in only as a last resort. We’ve done it through economics, and we’ve done it very, very subtly, so it’s been a secret empire, unlike all of history’s previous empires. Most Americans don’t realize that we’ve created this empire. They don’t realize what we’ve done in Latin America.

And the way economic hit men work, we use many different techniques, but probably the most typical is that we’ll identify a company [country] that has resources that corporations covet, like oil. We’ll arrange a huge loan from an organization like the World Bank for that country; but the money won’t go to that country at all. It goes to big U.S. corporations—Bechtel, Haliburton, ones we all hear about all the time—to build infrastructure projects in that country.

These projects, like industrial parks and power plants, benefit the very rich of those countries and do nothing for the poor, except to leave the country in a huge debt, one it can’t possibly repay, which means it can’t give social services, education, health to its poor, and it’s put in a position where it doesn’t repay its debts; so, at some point, we economic hit men go back in and we say: ‘Look, you can’t repay your debts, so give us a pound of flesh. Sell oil to our oil companies real cheap or vote with us at the next U.N. vote, or send troops in support of ours some place in the world.’ And that’s how we’ve created this empire; and we’ve done it without most Americans even realizing that it’s happening.

Well, I was recruited by the National Security Agency, the agency that’s getting so much attention right now because of spying on Americans, while I was still in college at Boston University; and the National Security Agency put me through a series of very extensive tests, including lie detector tests, personality tests. And I was in business school. They determined that I could be a good economic hit man.

They also discovered a lot of weaknesses in my character (I like to think of them as kind of the big—the three big drugs of our culture: money, power, and sex) that they could use as a hook to bring me in. So, I was told from the very beginning by this amazing woman, Claudine, (who’s described in detail in the book) who is basically my trainer that, ‘Look, you’re going into a dirty business. Once you’re in, you can never get out of this business; but we’re going to make it very attractive for you to go into this business.’

No, I never worked directly for the N.S.A., I worked for a company called Chas T. Main, big consulting firm out of Boston. And these days almost all of this work is done by private contractors. It’s not done directly by the C.I.A. or the N.S.A. They may recruit us, but we work for private industry.

The same is true of the jackals, Amy. If economic hit men fail, which we don’t usually do (but I did in Panama, for example, and I tell in detail in the book about how that ended up)—but my failure ended up in a jackal going in and assassinating Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama. When economic hit men fail, the jackals go in and either overthrow governments or assassinate leaders; and they, too, do not work directly for the government. These days, they’re private contractors. The days of the government agent, the 007, who’s licensed to kill, are long gone.

Well, I was sent in to Panama to bring Omar Torrijos around, to bring him into our system, and he refused to do that. He said, ‘Look, I know if I play your game’—he told me directly—‘If I play your game, I’ll become very rich. But that’s not what interests me. I want to help my poor people.’ And, so he said, ‘You can either get out of Panama or play the game my way.’ Well, we decided to stay and try to bring him around. He never would come around. And I knew all along that if I failed to bring this man around something dire would happen to him. And, you know, this is what’s going on in Latin America right now. Evo Morales is being visited this week by an economic hit man who’s going into his office saying, ’Congratulations, Mr. President—’

Well, an economic hit man who has to remain nameless at this point, but—

This should never happen if your stocks are low u order on time!!!

Gee, I never had a problem getting a glass of water, getting ice cubes or an ice cold beer in Salisbury. My, how times have changed.

@ TexasBob,

Water has been cut, so you cannot use the toilets therefore you cannot wash your hands. If you don’t wash your hands you will get Cholera, and also you cannot shake hands, or drive out of the city, get money from the bank, buy basic food. I am afraid there are other water borne diseases just waiting in line to jump out and terrorize poor Zimbabweans. Cholera out breaks was first reported in Congo and I have no doubt in my mind Zim soldiers brought the epidemic home. This is a tough video game that ZANU has created.