Mugabe compares Bush, Blair to Hitler at UN event

[Scurrilous]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051017/ts_nm/zimbabwe_mugabe_dc_3

<snip>

"Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Monday railed against U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling them "international terrorists" bent on world domination like Adolf Hitler.

Mugabe departed from his text at a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to accuse Bush and Blair of illegally invading Iraq and looking to unseat governments elsewhere.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed (an) unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?" he said.

"The voice of Mr Bush and the voice of Mr Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq," he said."

<snip>

"Some of the delegates applauded his fiery anti-Western speech several times."

[underpants]

1. Did he talk aobut his plans to feed his countrymen?

Did he unveil some great and wise NEW plan?

[tk2kewl]

2. .

[hogwyld]

34. Awesome!

And true to boot! Do they have an elephant morphing into a swastica?

[tk2kewl]

36. who knows... i cooked this one up myself a couple of months ago

[Cactus44]

3. Of all the people in the world who have NO room to talk,

Mugabe is at the TOP of the list. I'd take Bush over Mugabe any day!!
If he's somebody who has credibility with you you may want to re-evaluate your judgement.

[Javaman]

6. Pot meet Kettle

[Nostradammit]

24. The pot did correctly identify the color of the kettle -

It must be said.

[classysassy]

48. Bush VS Mugabe

How many people has Mugabe killed?,how many had Bush killed or had killed?.I don't believe Mugabe has invaded another country and killed people,can you say that about Blood and oil thirsty Bush.?

[afdip]

4. robert mugabe . . . now there's a name that brings to mind

africa's version of jackbooted nazi thugs turned against their own populace. a warm, caring, benevolent dictator in the mold of idi amin. i tend to agree with his assessment but somehow i have a knee-jerk reaction at hearing it coming from him.

[teknomanzer]

44. I am thinking something about rocks and glass houses...

[Wickerman]

5. When you make comparisons to Hitler, you automatically lose

true enough, and this guy might not have a lot of room for chatter. That said, I think one day the rules of debate will suggest that when you call your opponent "Bush" it will be said that you automatically lose. Yes, he is that bad.

[K-W]

7. Fun with quotes.

First we have the headline, which seems to suggest Mugabe made some kind of general comparison.

Then comes this gem.
"Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe on Monday railed against U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling them "international terrorists" bent on world domination like Adolf Hitler.

So Mugabe is claiming that Bush and Blaire are bent on world domination like Adolf Hitler. But this particular claim isnt in quotes, it is paraphrased.

No quote is provided in this article to support this summery of Mugabe's words. Since this is a story about the Hitler comments in particular, not the speech in general, I find it quite odd that they do not include the quote in which Mugabe claimed that Bush and Blair are bent on world domination like Adolph Hitler.

Perhaps Mugabe did not say this at all.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed (an) unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?" he said.

This is the only substantive quote provided, and he is making a very specific comparison between the Axis powers and the US/UK alliance against Iraq in that both sets of nations agreed to illegally attack a country. He is not making a general comparison, nor claiming that anyone is trying to take over the world like the Nazi's.

I know very little about Mugabe, so dont take this as a defense of him. I do however know plenty about how the media spins quotes, which is my concern here.

[Zynx]

8. Very interesting for Mugabe to compare someone to Hitler.

I'm sure he would know plenty about it since he himself is an authoritarian pig. I would greatly prefer we don't have "friends" like Mugabe in fighting Bush.

[springhill]

9. I'm sure that is true.............

But a big difference is that he is not invading and threatening to invade countries for oil and profit. Tell me, is their a distiction between killing your own countrymen and killing another countries men, women and children?

[Zynx]

14. Killing is killing.

Pol Pot never killed that many outside his own country and I would put him in the top 5 of the worst world leaders in history in terms of how much violence he committed. What Bush does in Iraq is as bad as what Mugabe does in Zimbabwe. Thus, neither one is in any position to criticize the other for being violent.

[Tomee450]

31. Nonsense

There is a vast difference between the killing of two people and the
killing of a hundred people. Both are horrible but one certainly cannot be considered as awful as the other. To equate Mugabe with the butchers of the world like Pol Pot is ridiculous.

[Zynx]

42. Mugabe is not a Pol Pot, but he is an authoritarian tyrant nonetheless.

[Tomee450]

10. Most of the reports of

Mugabe comes from the western press, mainly the United States and Britain. Funny, I never read such horrible reports of Mugabe from African media. Many people hate Mugabe for one reason only. He has thrown white farmers off land that they and their ancestors were given without paying the owners. The original owners were thrown off their land by Britain. A small group of whites owned most of the best land in the country and paid the blacks low wages. At least Mugabe isn't sending young men and women to die in a foreign land as part of an invasion of another country. At least he is not dropping bombs and killing innocent men women and children. Britain and the US have no room to talk.

[rinsd]

11. Read up on Mugabe......

http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-zwe/index

http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=africa&c=zimbab

One can hate Bush and not feel the need to defend a thug like Mugabe.

I can't believe anyone here would be supportive of a guy who initiates such a program against the poor.

http://hrw.org/backgrounder/africa/zimbabwe0905/1.htm#_Toc113947348

[Zynx]

13. Oh, but he has pursued land reform. /sarcasm

I hate it when people think that all of those that attempt agrarian reform are good people. Pol Pot and Mao both did the same sort of thing and killed huge percentages of their own countrymen.

[rman]

20. There's no way to tell if those (or any) sources tell the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

You point to the very sources that Tomee puts in question. The Western press typically does get information about human rights abuses from organizations such as those you refer to - organizations that happened to be created by the West.
That doesn't automatically mean those organizations are bad, but it does mean they are not as objective as some would have us believe - and as many people seem to assume.

It seems to be a foregone conclusion in the public mind that Mugabe is a thug. Much as with many people it appears to be a foregone conclusion that for instance Hugo Chavez, Castro and Aristide are thugs. There are plenty of media and other 'official' sources to attest to that.

History shows that many a democratically elected leader has somehow been removed from power due to US intervention of one kind or another - and only so because there was enough popular support in the US (or in the West if you will) to do just that, or at least to get away with it. But that popular support is usually the result of deception, much as it is with the war in Iraq now.

At the very least it's two thugs that are fighting. On the one hand the USA, undisputed military and economic super power. On the other hand a smaller thug, probably one who once served US interests and later decided to go his own way, still a thug of course.
One thing is for sure: after the fight it's the bigger thug is still around; who probably became a little bigger still as a result of winning. The bigger problem still exists, and became a little worse.
All i'm saying is, in the movies it's usually the Good Guy versus the Bad Guy. But in real life it isn't.

One can be sure about Bush and have doubts about others.

I don't think "doubt" does amount to "support".

Perhaps i should clarify that i do in fact support Chavez, Castro and Aristide - but not Mugabe. Though i have doubts about him. It's probably bad but not as bad as the western press makes it out to be. Castro is a bit of an odd one out, and not my favorite. But if i'd be poor and i'd have to choose between Cuba and the US, the choice would be simple for me.

[rinsd]

26. So HRW and AI are unreliable?

In what instance are they wrong? That they dare criticize leaders that some at DU hold in great esteem?

"All i'm saying is, in the movies it's usually the Good Guy versus the Bad Guy. But in real life it isn't."

Exactly, one can call Mugabe a vicious thug without being a defender of Bush and vice versa. Unfortunately sometimes those things do not happen.

[FarrenH]

29. Dude

My country (South Africa) is home to over a million refugees from Mugabe's political and economic oppression. Every single Zimbabwean I have ever met (black and white) hates the sonofabitch. Our other neighbour, Botswana, one of Africa's best run economies, has repeatedly said Mugabe is crazy and is destabilising the entire region (in the most diplomatic possible terms) and has erected an electric fence all along its border with Zim to stem the flood of Zimbabweans fleeing the country to work as labourers and prostitutes in Botswana.

The press here hate his guts, and we're right next door. I've been to Zimbabwe to provide computer training at an NGO that deals with AIDS and there's a palpable air of fear when it comes to politics. People just don't talk about it. Listening to Zimbabweans on call-in radio, I'm repeatedly informed that the reason is anyone could be part of Mugabe's secret service.

Aside from allegations of vote rigging, the Matabeleland massacre, farmers and farmworkers alike being chased off farms, young women testifying to rape being part of the indocrinaton process at ZANU-PF youth camps, the shutting down of independent newspapers and massive government investment in other newspapers, the laws in Zim speak for themselves.

Every political gathering must be authorised by the party in power. All foreign funding to NGO's and things like food aid must be given to the government for distribution. ZANU-PF altered the constitution so that over and above the elected seats, the President (Mugabe) gets to appoint 50 additional, unelected parlamentarians, who also have a vote.

Just from the laws ZANU-PF has passed it's obvious to any thinking person that Robert Mugabe is a tinpot dictator and Zim is a failed democracy. I don't want to put anyone here down but if you acquaint yourself with the acknowledged facts I'm sure you'll come to the only possible conclusion.

The only thing that makes Mugabe less threatening to the world than Bush is resources. If he had the USA's resources at his disposal he would be Hitler-lite.

[Tomee450]

30. I have read up on Mugabe

and that's how I know that most of his critics come from the Western press and the British government. As long as Mugabe was doing the bidding of his western handlers, he was their boy. Once, for whatever reason, he decided to take the land back from the whites, he suddenly became this monster, this thug. He could no longer be used. The British were supposed to reimburse the farmers for the loss of their land but reneged. Now they are being forced off and the British wish to put the blame on Mugabe. He is only a thug now because he is bucking the British and it is their media along with other western media that is demonizing him.

[rinsd]

33. Human Right Watch and Amnesty are lying then?

Did you even read the links I provided?

The logic sometimes astounds me here. West = bad, therefore Mugabe = good. Bush = bad, therefore Saddam = good.

[rayofreason]

35. well put...

...and well supported.

[freestyle]

12. Mugabe lost any moral standing long ago.

The things he has said about GLBT people are right down there with Fred Phelps. He also made the sorry transition from liberator to dictator at least a decade ago. Anyone who has held power for 25 years has not done it legitimately.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

15. Do you want a tinpot dictator who likes to insult Bush?

Here's the memo: Chavez isn't one -- this one is.

[MN ChimpH8R]

16. Mugabe is a corrupt goon

he just recognizes himself in the Chimp.

[Julius Civitatus]

17. Who the hell is Mugabe to criticize anyone?

As much as I dislike Bush and Blair, at least, at least, they are teh result of a (somewhat) democratic system. Mugabe is actually a dictator of the same kind as Idi Amin or Baptiste. Talk about hypocrisy! This is the same a-hole that brough "Operation Clear the Filth" to Zimbabwe.

He has ZERO moral room to make such assertion. What a prick!

[ConcernedCanuk]

18. I read the responses - doesn't MATTER who says it - it's the truth!

.
.
.

The truth is the truth - and that's that

doesn't matter if it's the evilest man in the world that has the balls to say it -

doesn't detract from the validity of the claim

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed (an) unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?"

Well said in my opinion

and shame on anyone that doesn't support his claims in this regard

any other issuses with Mugabe are SEPERATE in my Canuk opinion

but as I've said b4

I's jus a Canuk

whadda I know - - :shrug:

[greygandalf]

21. Does'nt matter who says it?

Ok, guess we better start taking Bush statements more seriously. Since it does not matter who says things.

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. U been here 6 days and got under my skin already??

.
.
.

sheesh

think a bit -

it makes a difference WHAT they say

Bush lies - that's known world-wide

the quote I used from Mugabe

sounds like the truth to me . . .

and He has a voice the World can hear -

I know many people that I do not like,

but that does not stop me from listening to them and sorting out the truth from fiction

Even with my best friends,

I do not believe everything they say without going thru my thinking process . . .

Just a wee quirk of mine . . .

Thinking . . .

[greygandalf]

25. infering Mugabe does not lie?

Sorry about getting under your skin. I do like debate though. You are kind of infering Mugabe does not lie. The world hears Muabe obviously as well.

[Name removed]

27. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[FarrenH]

38. That's a strange response

There's nothing disrepectful or unpleasant in greygandalf's post. Why on earth are you pissed off? Do you see any challenge to your views or probing question as offensive?

[reorg]

46. No, it clearly isn't

That greygandalf person doesn't seem to think that Mugabe is correct in his characterisation of your president. I wonder why, since he has yet anything to say that would challenge Mr. Mugabe's statement. I for one find this odd, and somewhat unpleasant, too ...

[Truebrit71sbruv]

59. It very much matters who speaks the truth...

... if anyone is going to listen to it seriously.

The essence of his words are indeed true. But his words are instantly devalued in both impact and validity, given that they are spouted from the mouth of a man who systematically incarcerates and then kills (when he thinks the world isn't looking) any dissenting voice.

Whilst the truth matters above all - for the truth to be HEARD it needs to come from someone with a voice and integrity that can be relied upon.

Mugabe is a psychotic, paranoid, deluded and extremely dangerous man. He has been directly responsible for the most hideous economic and social collapse of his own country.

The method of communication actually matters - not just the message. To think otherwise is naive and deeply worrying.

[0rganism]

19. Pot, meet kettle.

Good grief.

[pinniped]

22. I always said the POS* wants to star in the History Channel's Madmen...

of History program.

[politicaholic]

28. Oh, Mugabe, what a collosal POS...

starving millions of poor people out of their homes and then lobbing missiles at them while they flee. What a humanitarian. And there he stands in his self important uniform getting a smattering of applause from his fellow dictators.

A car bomb is too good for him.

[Tomee450]

32. All you know about Mugabe

is what you hear from the western media. The same media that lied about Iraq, the same media that said blacks were rioting in the Super Dome, the same press that told the world that little babies were having their throats cut in NOLA, the same press that reported widespread shooting by blacks at relief workers in the aftermath of Katrina. The same press that supported Tony Blair and Bush in a war most people did not want. Oh yes the western press is so good to Africans. It was the New york times that gave the world such a horribly distorted picture of the African continent. Oh yes, the western press is so unbiased when it comes to reporting on black folks. Not!

Mugabe is a dictator who was supported by the west. He is hated now for only one reason. He has become independent and will no longer obey. I don't think he is a good person but no worse than many other political leaders around the world.

[FarrenH]

37. Read my post above

Facts, not opinions, make Mugabe an asshole of particular note. The laws his government has passed are tyrannical and antidemocratic. One has to either be ill-informed or in denial of reality to deny that requiring ruling party authorisation for all opposition political gatherings, detention without trial and the padding of parliament with 50 unelected parlamentarians (who have votes) selected by Presidential fiat is not deliberately antidemocratic and tyrannical. I could go on and on. These are the laws of the country, passed by ZANU-PF. It's nothing to do with the personal loyalties of journalists. The actual legislation (including constitutional amendments) engineered by ZANU-PF has had a linear trajectory for almost a decade and that trajectory is in the direction of tyranny.

While we're on the topic, don't mix up US media with the rest of the "Western Media". Media in the UK, South Africa, France, Germany, New Zealand and many other "Western" countries is far less slavishly devoted to the interests of the powers that be. I've been digging around on my hard drive for a study commissioned by the UN which concluded that the press in the US is far more consolidated and controlled by large corporations in the States than anywhere else but alas, I can't find it. Suffice to say you'd be astonished at how disrespectful of authority and power the media is in other countries.

Did the UK press, for instance, timidly line up behind Blair in his poodle-powered push for war? Hell no. There is no monolithic "Western media".

[FarrenH]

39. A second point.

I'm sure the excess of a million Zimbabweans who have flooded into my country and jam up the phone lines with anti-Mugabe venom every time there's a radio show on Zim, or the people of Botswana who put up an electric fence to stop the flood of starving, jobless refugees from a country that ten short years ago was called "the breadbasket of Southern Africa" would be interested to hear the "Western media" theory. Bear in mind that Zim is not in a state of civil war. The opposition is peaceful (Zimbabweans are a largely peace-loving people). These people are fleeing the government and their policies.

I'm not attacking you personally, just trying to demonstrate that the bad press Mugabe gets isn't just about journalists vague academic opinions. There's a real fire under this smoke.

Even Mugabe's "land reform" is a corrupt, politically opportunistic process. Farmworkers have been ejected from the land they work in far greater numbers than farm owners. Practically every ZANU-PF parlamentarian has received one or more appropriated farms. These parlamentarians are not the starving masses. In many cases, appropriation and land invasion was closely followed by the selling off of farm equipment and dismissal of workers, and many farms simply stopped producing.

Contrast this to the carefully thought out legal process (land claims courts, investigators who actually bring in experts to determine the history of a piece of land and check whether ancestral claims are valid and so on) in South Africa - and the many collaborations between government, NGO's, newly-enriched recipients of land claims and landowners to develop sustainable community agriculture projects.

I'm a white South African and I fully support the land claims process that's going on in South Africa. My family is currently facing the possibility of losing our smallholding and I'm fully in support of the process if the land claims court rules in favour of the alleged descendants of the original occupants. Justice must be done.

But it concerns me when corrupt politicians like Mugabe don the cloth of populism when public opinion turns against them and win knee-jerk leftist support even though there's a vast gulf between the stated policy (correction of historical injustice, land for the landless) and the undeniable reality (land grabs for the powerful and to shore up support among disaffected supporters with cake and circuses)

And no, I'm not a disaffected whitey who secretly yearns for Apartheid. I slipped military secrets to the ANC when it was still banned while doing mandatory military service in the old days. I hate Mugabe because I'm proudly African, whatever my ancestry, and it hurts my heart to see idiots like him dragging Africa down.

[Andromeda]

54. Welcome to DU,

:hi:

[FarrenH]

56. Thanks n/t

[politicaholic]

41. FarrenH put it very eloquently above, but here's a couple of links...

It's a short article:

http://www.newzimbabwe.com/pages/mbeki28.13297.html

And here's how the African press is "Catchin' the Mugabe Wave":

http://allafrica.com/stories/200510090239.html

You're right, I'm just so incredibly amazed at how beloved Mugabe is across Africa.

[Virginian]

55. Here's another website. -- the description is theirs.

Breaking news direct to your mailbox
Visit www.zwnews.com - the world's leading website on Zimbabwe

[1932]

49. Mugabe isn't really a dictator, technically speaking.

They do elect their government in Zimbabwe.

Two things I've read about Zimbabwe recently:

1) In his book published about 5 years ago, Amartya Sen uses Zimbabwe as an example of a country that hasn't suffered from a famine since becoming a democracy. Sen said that, at the time his book was printed, no democracy (no matter how defective) has ever suffered from a famine. However, colonies and dictatorships constantly suffer from famines. N.K. and Sudan are the most famine-ridden countries today. Countries like India had famines in the last years of colonialism but immediately upon becoming democracies, the famines were solved. Sen says that it's incredibly easy for countries to provide everyone with a minimal level of food, and that addressing famine is much more often a matter of political will and that's why democracies solve that problem.

2) Jeffrey Sachs says in The End of Poverty that Zimbabwe might be the one country where you can blame all the economic problems on one person. He says Zimbabwe has many other problems, but it's economic mismanagement by Mugabe that has caused most of them. The thing is, he was saying that about Mugabe's actions from the 80s and 90s, It's not a criticism of rejecting neoliberalism. It's a criticism of a long project of screwing up -- but I think it's important to recognize that Mugabe has spent most of his career up to '98 appeasing the west.

[Truebrit71sbruv]

60. I strongly suggest you...

...pick up a copy of The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, Politiken, Le Monde, Le Figaro and any number of European papers from your news-stand before you make such rash statements as:

The same media that lied about Iraq, the same media that said blacks were rioting in the Super Dome, the same press that told the world that little babies were having their throats cut in NOLA, the same press that reported widespread shooting by blacks at relief workers in the aftermath of Katrina. The same press that supported Tony Blair and Bush in a war most people did not want. Oh yes the western press is so good to Africans. It was the New york times that gave the world such a horribly distorted picture of the African continent. Oh yes, the western press is so unbiased when it comes to reporting on black folks. Not!

Dissenting voices, CONSISTENTLY dissenting voices are actually heard in the mainstream media outside the US.

[jbane]

40. Mugabe is a racist pig...

If this a-hole is calling someone Hitler he might want to look at "the man in the mirror" as Jacko said in his song.

[MzShellG]

43. Some sound offended that Mugabe critized Bush. n/t

[FarrenH]

45. Not so much offended

I think, as surprised that some people think Mugabe might be a victim of mischaracterisation by "Western media" etc. Well that's me at least.

[reorg]

47. anti-"Western"???

How is it "anti-Western" when somebody makes a few pertinent comments that are widely popular in the "West" and directed not at the "West" but against two of the most pernicious thugs in the Western hemisphere?

>>

... "But is it not obvious that Britain, under the regime of Tony Blair, has ceased to respect the charter of the United Nations."

Mr. Mugabe also lashed out at the United States for its response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. He charged that authorities had deliberately abandoned non-white Americans in what he called an example of "callous racial neglect."

"Most of the victims were blacks, and we are bound to ask what transgressions we, the blacks of this world, have committed? Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves?" asked Mr. Mugabe.

President Bush has said every race was affected by the hurricane, but he acknowledged that the greatest hardship fell on the poor, and that poverty has its roots in generations of segregation and discrimination. He appealed to Americans to "clear away the legacy of inequality." ...

<<


http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-09-18-voa28.cfm



>> ... the United Kingdom has ceased to respect the Charter of the United Nations:

"Witness its being a principal member of the anti-Iraq illegal Coalition that went on a devastating campaign of the country in complete defiance of the United Nations Charter. Any state or group of states that commits such an act of aggression on another, justifying it on blatant falsehoods, surely becomes guilty of state terrorism." ...

http://www.un.org/radio/story.asp?NewsID=2981


Hardly deniable. I would hope our Western heads of state could find it in themselves one day to state the obvious, too.


on edit: added link

[OKNancy]

50. kick

[callady]

51. Mugabe Compares Bush and Blair to Hitler

Mugabe compares Bush and Blair to Hitler

By Geneviève Roberts

Published: 18 October 2005


Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe used a United Nations gathering in Rome to compare George Bush and Tony Blair to Hitler and Mussolini. He said they were "international terrorists" bent on world domination.

Departing from his text, at the celebration of the Food and Agriculture Organisation's 60th anniversary, he accused Mr Bush and Mr Blair of illegally invading Iraq and looking to unseat other governments.

"Must we allow these men, the two unholy men of our millennium, who in the same way as Hitler and Mussolini formed unholy alliance, formed an alliance to attack an innocent country?" he said.

<snip>

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez turned his speech into a tirade against "the north American empire" which is threatening "all life on the planet" through pollution and climate-change problems.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article320404.ece

[Metta]

52. I'd be surprised if their voices stirred up much.

Just saying.

[CatBoreal]

53. Well if that isn't...

...the pot calling the kettle black.

Look in the mirror lately Robert???

[nolabels]

57. Comparative analogy, a piece of shit on top of the pile...........

smells a lot more than that other piece at the bottom

(if you get the drift) :hide:


http://corrente.blogspot.com/2004_01_04_corrente_archive.html

[Stockholm]

58. It takes one to know one?

Sadly his influence is increasing in Africa, especially worrisome is the trend in SA where frustration over land reforms is fueling violence as we speak.