Re: Missing Episodes in Zimbabwe ?

On 22 Feb, 13:42, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
<pbow...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message

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On 22 Feb, 07:35, "Agamemnon" <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





"The Doctor" <doc...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message

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In article <QM6dnUXUA-WJ-z3UnZ2dnUVZ8uSdn...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Agamemnon <agamem...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

"US 71" <u...@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
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http://www.hararetribune.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=articl...

LONG-lost Doctor Who episodes thought to be hidden away in Zimbabwe
may
never be recovered because despot Robert Mugabe hates the UK.

BBC investigators believe the troubled nation holds some of the early
episodes of the cult series which are still missing.

But tyrant President Mugabe has banned the Beeb from setting foot in
his

And do you really think that calling him a tyrant and a despot is going
to
make him more likely to change his mind?

country. And diplomatic relations are also extremely tense - meaning
researchers are unable to get into the nation's TV vaults.

The BBC destroyed early episodes of the sci-fi series in the late
Sixties
and Seventies to make room in its film library for new programmes.

But Zimbabwe is understood to have bought the first season of the show
when it was still a British colony known as Rhodesia. It starred
William
Hartnell and ran from 1963 to 1964. The Beeb suspects the historic
series,
together with later episodes not held anywhere else in the world, may
still be locked away.

Ag! Robert Mugabe is the ultimate feudalist!

No, he's the ultimate anti-feudalist. He's taking from the rich white
farmers who stole their land from the indigenous people and giving to the
poor blacks who they used as slaves.

<<<You don't have a fucking clue, do you Aggy? And you really do lap up
tabloid headlines.

You know when much of the land Mugabe's seizing was given to the
whites? In the 1980s. Who gave it to them? Robert Mugabe. The guy who>>>

I can see that you've been totally brainwashed. The land was given to the
whites by the British colonialists over 100 years before Mugabe when they
invaded the region.

Aggy, look at the operative qualifier in the above - "Much of the land
Mugabe's seizing..." Yes, Aggy, the colonial founders of Rhodesia took
land from the locals (or in many cases tricked them into giving it to
them). And then, when Mugabe came in, guess what happened? He gave
even more land to them.

You really need to learn that reality isn't black-and-white. Even in
post-colonial Africa. No one's defending the colonial era, so you can
dismantle that straw man now. But it is emphatically not possible to
use colonial injustices to justify Mugabe's tyranny, and especially
not when he was busy handing out land and tax breaks to the whites
until the MDC was formed and the whites openly supported it.

<<<was busy committing genocide against rival tribes at the time.>>>

Rival tribes? Yes, why don't you continue using racist terminology and
demene the people as uncivilised by calling them tribes.

Am I imagining things or did you really say this? Are you genuinely
this isolated and unaware of cultures other than your own and the way
they define themselves? Or come to that the entire edifice of
anthropology? Just when I think you can't get any more ignorant or any
thicker, you say something like this and remind me that you're Aggy.

<<<Mugabe's purges against whites had nothing at all to do with race - it
was because the whites overwhelmingly supported the MDC, and were a
visible target.>>>

More brainwashed nonsense. First you talk about tribes and now it's the MDC
which you make into your factious enemy.

Aggy, Mugabe started purging the whites earlier this decade. The
tribal purges I mentioned took place shortly after he came to power.
The MDC wasn't even founded until 1999.

The MDC has nothing to do with it
other than standing for the British colonialist status que and allowing the
whites to keep their stolen land.

Hold on, I just remembered - you were an apologist for Saddam Hussein
as well, weren't you? You really are a vile character - what next, an
impassioned defence of Than Shwe?

<<<You know why whites in Zimbabwe had more land than blacks, other than>>>

Because they stole if off the blacks and made the blacks who lived on the
land originally into their slaves.

Aggy, slavery was banned in Britain and its colonies about a century
before Rhodesia was even colonised. Incidentally, the 'blacks' in
question, the Ndebele, first arrived in the Zimbabwe area in the 1830s
- they *did* conquer and enslave the native Shona population of
Zimbabwe.

<<<Mugabe selling it to them on the cheap? Because they're mostly
farmers. Lawyers and city professionals, the jobs largely reserved for
blacks, tend not to own as much land - in Britain, you'd find that>>>

Lawyers and city professionals? You are having a laugh. The jobs reserved
for Blacks under the white administration were domestic and farm slaves.

Um, Aggy? There hasn't been a white administration in Zimbabwe for 30
years. We're talking about the modern country; hence the use of the
name Zimbabwe rather than Rhodesia.

It
was the Smith administration of Rhodesia that sold the black peoples land to
the white farmers. That's where the people rebelled and put Mugabe in power.

This is the land you were just claiming was stolen 100 years ago?

<<<farmers own a disproportionately large amount of land as well. The>>>

Yes we know. It's was stolen by the Normans from the Saxons who impose a
system of Feudalism which made the original people who lived on the land
into their slaves.

You really don't understand this concept of time passing, do you?
Feudalism has been gone for centuries in Britain. And farmers still
have more land than lawyers, for very practical reasons which are
obvious to everyone but you. Modern Zimbabwean whites are almost
exclusively farmers and managers of private game reserves - these take
up space.

Yes, there was still a pronounced wealth inequality that was held over
from the Smith administration and before - though as with the land
sales to whites, all Mugabe's administration has ever done is to
exacerbate it. This is where the focus ought to be, not on land
redistribution (especially when Zimbabwe lacks a workforce of trained
black farmers).

Understand this Aggy: the situation in Zimbabwe in the colonial era
was bad. There's no denying it, and in Zimbabwe as elsewhere in Africa
people turned to someone whose only qualification for leadership was
the ability to oppose his enemies through violence. And the results
everywhere were predictable.

Now read this carefully, because it's the important thing: Mugabe did
nothing to change that. Nothing at all. Zimbabwe's wealth was based on
the whites' ability to produce enough food - and we've now seen just
how quickly the country collapsed as soon as its white foundation was
taken away. Mugabe had 30 years to improve the lot of the blacks, to
genuinely liberate them and create a country that could function as an
almost fully black African nation. All he did was terrorise his
opponents and act as a figurehead by 'blackwashing' the government.
There are limits to how far you can blame colonialism for modern
failures, and Mugabe is well past that cut-off point; under his rule,
land inequality in favour of whites increased, wealth inequality in
favour of whites increased, and blacks suffered disproportionately
from human rights abuses in the country. And a country that emerged
from colonial rule with functioning government institutions and one of
the healthiest economies in Africa now lies in ruin through a
combination of forcing out the skilled workforce at the base of the
national food chain, mismanaging the economy, and turning a blind eye
to epidemics of AIDS and malaria that render increasing numbers of
people unable to work.

<<<whites were also the main source of employment for rural black people,>>>

Slavery you mean.

No, Aggy, I mean employment - as in, paying people to work for you, as
well as providing them with food, accommodation, all the things those
who survived Mugabe's attacks no longer have now their former
employers' lands have been seized.

<<<a source Mugabe took away. He has also been far more brutal to the>>>

Yes, he freed the people from slavery.

No, Aggy. Your world really is black and white, isn't it? Replacing a
white president with a black one doesn't make someone Nelson Mandela.
No one regards Idi Amin or Mobutu as a great liberator these days;
people see them for what they were: violent thugs using an
independence struggle as an excuse for their own dictatorial power
grab.

<<<some of those who were killed or beaten were killed/beaten while
trying to protect their black workers from attacks), who Mugabe's
thugs routinely attack and kill for supporting the opposition.>>>

You mean for supporting the colonialists.

No, for supporting the MDC. The colonial era ended 30 years ago, and
most actual colonisation by the end of the 19th Century; modern white
inhabitants of Zimbabwe are as Zimbabwean as the descendants of the
Ndebele who invaded the country in the 1830s, or the descendants of
the Shona who can trace their history in the region to the Middle
Ages.

<<<means to live under a totalitarian regime, rather than using 'tyrant'
and 'despot' as meaningless insults to hurl at an unpopular leader in
a liberal democracy (hint: despots tend not to step aside when they
lose an election. Look at Mugabe).>>>

You don't have a clue do you. George Bush slaughtered over one million
innocent people for no reason whatsoever in Iraq,

The highest estimates being put forward these days are 500,000. Still
a high number, but whatever one's feelings about George Bush, a
bungled military campaign is as far removed from systematic ethnic
cleansing, suppression of dissent and campaigns of torture as you can
get. You've never been good with understanding the importance of
context in any situation, have you, Aggy?

more than were victims
under Saddam Hussein. George Bush truly deserves the title of tyrant and
despot

Look up what the words mean, Aggy. George Bush was paranoid and
incompetent, and presided over a disastrously-planned and executed
campaign in Iraq as well as increased restrictions on personal privacy
and civil liberties in his home country, but that remained a home
country that was free to complain about him for all of those reasons
and was equally free to get rid of him when it had had enough. Using
terms like 'tyrant' and 'despot', as well as demonstrating you have no
understanding of what they mean beyond what the tabloids scream,
devalues both those terms and what might otherwise be reasonable
objections if couched in more appropriate language.

and should be put on trial and convicted of crimes against humanity.

Um, Aggy, you get what the idea of a trial is, right?

Phil
.