WaPost finally notices the atrocities

The WaPost has finally noticed the major demoicide in Zimbabwe, on page A 23 of the paper...I guess "deep throat" and Koran mishandling and Michael Jackson are more important...but even page 23 is better than nothing...

Zimbabwe Police Raze Poor Towns In Rampage
Government Says Homes Being Destroyed Are Illegal

Yup...must be fair and balanced in the headline...give the government spin in the headlines, but only if the government is a third world tyrant...we can't have the WaPost accused of dissing third world tyrants, can we?.

At least 22,000 street traders have been arrested, police said in government-owned newspapers, and tens of thousands of people have been left homeless. Though the full extent of the operation remains unknown, opposition leaders say as many as 1.5 million people in Harare alone may have lost their homes.

President Robert Mugabe has dubbed the campaign "Operation Murambatsvina," which the state-owned press translates as "Operation Restore Order" and portrays as a necessary effort to curb crime, garbage and the other excesses of rapid urbanization over the past several years. But in Shona, the dominant language in Zimbabwe, it has a more sinister translation, given that most of those targeted are poor: "Operation Drive Out the Rubbish."

kuSvina means to clean up...

In Hatfield Extension, more than 6,000 people lost their homes on police order last Sunday. No houses or shops remain standing, and a community mosque was destroyed.

Aggh they destroyed a mosque...where is Alqada when you need them? naah, it's okay to destroy a mosque if you are a tyrant or if you are a Islmofascist sunni bombing a shiite mosque in Iraq or Pakistan...

Since the March 31 parliamentary elections, in which Mugabe won a landslide victory in voting that many Western governments denounced as rigged, ah, fellahs: Everyone said it was rigged: the catholic church, the Anglican church, the opposition leaders, not just "western governments"...again WaPost anti western spin giving credance to a tyrant in the middle of an article that dares to criticize him...

the currency has plunged and basic commodities such as sugar, flour and cornmeal have disappeared from store shelves. Gas shortages are so severe that motorists line up for blocks simply on rumors of deliveries at filling stations.

But Mugabe's party traditionally has found support in Hatcliffe Extension and some of the other areas razed in the past two weeks, a fact that some people say is an indication that the government campaign is less about punishing opponents than reversing years of urbanization.

Hmm...reversing years of urbanization by forcing people back to the land...Mugabe is of course a trained Marxist...and forcing ignorant city folks back to farm areas to do rudimentary farming when they have no knowledge of farming is a recurring theme in marxist societies....

Zimbabweans in recent years have increasingly abandoned farming in rural areas to work as street traders in cities and live in shantytowns and other informal settlements....