C-FAR #318 December, 1997
Mugabe to Steal Over 1,500-White-Owned
Farms
Presiding over a nation riddled with AIDS, old-Marxist
Robert Mugabe has succumbed to the politics of greed and seems determined
to decimate his country's food-producers -- the White farmers. Grim lessons
learned by similar actions years ago in Zambia seem lost on the aging strongman.
Last June Zimbabwe's president, Robert Mugabe devised a novel method of
expressing thanks for generations of foreign aid, giving notice: "The
West and its economies will be targets rather than allies during his stewardship
of the Organization of African Unity." (Globe and Mail, June 4, 1997)
In accordance with that view, "the Zimbabwean government gazetted
yesterday a list of 1,503 farms, owned mostly by white commercial farmers,
that it has earmarked to buy forcibly for a controversial peasant resettlement
program. ... Mugabe said on Thursday the land reform is crucial to achieving
social justice [seizing nearly half the white-owned land in the country
in the furtherance of this justice]. ... The government ... says it will
pay only for equipment and improvements on the farms but not the land."
(Globe and Mail, November 29, 1997)
Scant days before, speaking in Kuala Lumpur,
Mr. Mugabe said, "Despite the fact that most African countries have
embarked on political and economic reforms aimed at creating a conducive
environment for foreign investment, the response has been far from satisfactory."
(Globe and Mail, November 22, 1997) One can't help but wonder why? In South
Africa, heir-apparent Thabo Mbeki warned, "that South Africa could
face race revolts by the end of the decade if living standards of the impoverished
majority did not improve dramatically. He has urged whites to 'consciously
and voluntarily' make greater sacrifices for the sake of stability. ...
Justice Minister Dullah Omar has since suggested that the government should
draft legislation compelling business to contribute to a reparations fund
for victims of apartheid. ... The desired outcome would be to simultaneously
achieve economic growth, fight poverty and use affirmative action to create
a new black economic elite." (Globe and Mail, November 22, 1997)
Mr. Mbeki may soon find himself making some sacrifices
of his own. "South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission said
yesterday it may ask the court to review the amnesty granted to 37 leading
members of the governing African National Congress, including the son of
the commission's chairman, Archbisop Desmond Tutu [as well as Deputy President
Thabo Mbeki]. ... [The amnesties were given on Nov. 28 without the ANC
applicants outlining their actions." (Globe and Mail, December 9,
1997)
Asia Wallows in Pollution, but the
West Must Pay
At Kyoto, Western leaders committed us to goals
and timetables for the reduction of carbon emissions. Of course, the Third
World is exempt from these goals. What they will mean to us hasn't yet
been spelled out. Look for higher gasoline taxes as the car-hating people
planners, as usual, blame us. On November 25, the Communist Chinese government
"said any agreement should not place binding limits on developing
nations. The mainland's emissions of the greenhouse gasses suspected of
causing global warming are second only to those of the United States."
(South China Morning Post, November 26, 1997) Indeed, as the following
items demonstrate much of Asia wheezes, coughs, and slowly sickens in a
poisonous stew of its own making.
Nicholas D. Kristof, writing for the N.Y. Times
News Service, in an article datelined Badui, China, reports: "This
little village is hauntingly beautiful, a patchwork of mud-brick shacks
framed by the vastness of the Yellow River on one side and rugged gray
mountains on the other. But as peasants shuffle along the ocher paths,
their eyes following their children and aching at the sight, the hamlet
suddenly seems chilly, frightening and grotesque. One-third of the peasants
in this hamlet in Gansu Province in western China are mentally retarded
or seriously ill. Most people die in middle age, the women report unending
miscarriages and stillbirths, many of the children are trapped in toddler-size
bodies that they never grow out of, and even the goats totter and stagger
into trees as they go blind and insane. In the entrance to one house stood
a boy named Wei Haiyun, only 29 inches tall -- the height that an average
American baby boy reaches at 12 months, but Haiyun is 8 years old.
Haiyun, who is mentally retarded as well, casually
urinated on the floor and then played with his fingers in the puddle, as
his mother watched and bit her lip and admitted that the only word he ever
utters is 'Ma.' The peasants believe that the horrors of Badui village
are the result of polluted water discharged by the state-run Liujiaxia
Fertilizer Factory next door. The factory, which sometimes denies the accusations
and mostly ignores them, dumps its wastes into the Yellow River just upstream
from where the villagers draw their drinking water.
The pain here in Badui is emblematic of the growing
environmental catastrophe all across Asia. The cost of Asia's 'economic
miracle' is a rising tide of pollution that is proving a burden not just
for Asia but for the entire earth. Already, Asia has what many experts
consider the dirtiest water in the world, the filthiest air, the most worrisome
overfishing, and the fastest-disappearing coral reefs. One study by the
United Nations suggested that 13 of the 15 cities with the worst air pollution
in the world are in Asia. 'The worst pollution in the world is unequivocally
in Asia,' said Daniel C. Esty, director of the Center for Environmental
Law and Policy at Yale University and co-author of a new book on Asia-Pacific
environmental issues. 'The statistics about China are stunning, and right
behind those Chinese cities stand almost every other major city of Asia:
Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta are all right up there among the top polluted
cities of the world.' ... Aside from the United States, China is already
the biggest source of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming, and,
perhaps more worrying for the long run, the two fastest-growing sources
of these emissions are China and India.
More than 1.56 million Asians die each year from
the effects of air pollution alone, not counting 500,000 more who die each
year from dirty water and bad sanitation, according to estimates published
recently by the World Health Organization and the World Bank. Another new
study, also from the World Bank but using different assumptions, calculates
that 2.03-million people die annually in China alone from the effects of
water and air pollution. ... It appears that considerably more people die
each year from pollution in Asia than died in the Indochina wars centered
on Vietnam (about 1.4 million, from the 1950s through the 1970s). ... Many
experts believe that in the coming decades, it is the industrialization
of Asia that will pose fundamental new stresses for the ecosystem. Not
only does Asia have 60 percent of the world's population, 12 times as much
as North America's, but Asia's industrialization is also taking place at
triple the pace of the industrial revolution in the West."
Meanwhile, according to the South China Morning
Post,"the paradox is that Asians are not fleeing the filth but embracing
it. From India to China, Asians vote with their feet, moving from rural
areas with relatively clean air to the squalid mega-cities that are among
the filthiest places on earth. To an American, the endless Howrah slums
in Calcutta, India, or the shantytowns outside Jakarta, Indonesia, seem
hellish intersections of gritty air and contaminated water. But to many
rural Indians or Indonesians, the slums sing of opportunity, of jobs, of
schools, of hope to break out of subsistence poverty. So, peasants take
a calculated risk, accepting that their children may die of respiratory
infections or diarrhea in exchange for the chance that they may become
educated and rich. It is a dangerous gamble but not necessarily a foolish
one, and for many people it pays off. Partly as a result of such risk-taking,
most Asians are living longer and better than ever, and others are choking
to death. The stakes in this terrible gamble are evident in the sparkling
black eyes of Kittiya Soisingh, a1 4 month-old girl who lives in Bangkok.
Her parents moved to a Bangkok slum to get a better life, and as a result
Kittiya may lose hers altogether. "
You Have All the Tenderness of a
Sea-Sick Crocodile The Grinch Story Retold.
Living in bitter seclusion on Mount Crumpet,
the Grinch has endured fifty-three Christmases too many. Greenly repulsive
and keenly resentful, he peers around peaks and gnashes unlovely teeth
as he cups an unlovely hand to an unlovely ear. They're at it again! Down
in Whoville, the fools are singing and swaying - out celebrating. For what?
For why? For whom? Then they'll join hands with that awful tree in the
middle and the Grinch, as he watches, feels his marginalized heart turn
to stone. How he detests them, how he despises, those Whos down in Whoville,
exchanging their puzzles and prizes while feast, feast, feasting on roast
suckling beastling. Fifty-three years of suffering alone, "How can
I force those Whos to atone?
Those should be MY gew-gaws, trinkets and thimbles;
MY gimcracks, gift wrap and symbols". And the more the Grinch thought
of this whole Christmas thing, the more the Grinch thought "I've put
up with it for fifty three years now. I must derail their Christmas - their
brotherhood too. I must stop Christmas from coming! But how?" With
his Grinch fingers nervously drumming, he says "I know just what to
do! For once, their holidays won't seem as obtrusive - just watch the Grinch
MAKE them inclusive". As he makes preparations for Christmas reparations,
the Grinch mumbles under his breath, "This is the fifty third year."
So he dons his red costume and adjusts his sneer, but he's still a Grinch-version
of the saint of good cheer. "What do they think? So pinkly-pink, that
they deserve their wealth? I'll sneak in as they sleep, I'll help myself!"
Then he readies the dog, puts a horn on his head -- a passive-aggressive
shall pull the Grinch-sled.
Down the mountain, driven by whip to the town
- the Grinch commences with a sickly green frown, the little dog, with
a yelp. "They're sleeping, the fools, may they choke on their yules".
There's looting in Whoville as someone green, in the firelight's sheen,
plucks a star from a tree. "Let us be thorough and plunder the borough
- possession's nine-tenths of the law! Take the frim-frams, the boojams,
the gold and the nickels, oranges, glockenspiels, peplums and pickles.
The gew-gaws, the thing-a-ma-jigs, pop-guns and pretzels. Tee-hee, haw-haw,
just wait until morning"! And, all without warning, Whoville awakes
to the news. "Did you know, did you hear? Wrongs have been righted
- now no one feels slighted! O glorious day! Hurrah! Hooray! Sing away.
Another glorious year!"
To All Our Readers, We Say It Proudly With No
Nod to Politcal Correctness: A Very Merry Christmas and a Most Happy New
Year for You and Yours!
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