AFRICA

Amazing! "Amid chronic fuel, food and currency shortages and a contracting economy, Zimbabwe has secretly placed a 200m order for fighter jets and military vehicles from China". While millions of Zimbabweans are going hungry at the same time, of course. Obviously a Leftist government! And how will they pay for it? Maybe with all the farms they have just "nationalized" somehow?

There is a graphic description here of the disaster that is socialism in Ethiopia today. It was a totally foreseeable disaster and is a perfect example of the fact that Leftists are not even interested in thinking ahead -- something also seen in the Muslim-appeasers of today's "antiwar" American Left. Only the instant gratification of appearing praiseworthy in the present matters to them. A small excerpt: "Abraham Tekelgne's family couldn't have been happier when a socialist government swept to power, seized the country's private farmland and allotted it to rural peasants... Today the family often gets by on one meal of toasted corn a day. Too poor to buy fertilizer and with few trees left to cut, they're not sure how they will make it another year... The stakes are highest in Ethiopia, where the number of people dependent on international food aid is growing by 2 million a year"

William Shawcross on the current Darfur holocaust: "Since early last year, this vicious campaign has claimed an estimated 30,000 civilian lives; international aid agencies say that over 1.2m people have been displaced within Sudan and at least 120,000 have fled to neighbouring Chad, making Khartoum's conduct a grave threat to regional as well as internal stability. USAID estimates that another 350,000 could die due to the desperate situation in Darfur. In short, the government of Sudan is conducting a scorched-earth, near-genocidal war against its own citizens. Again... But the time for the international community to stand by and hope is long past. The government-supported atrocities in Darfur are too horrific and widespread to ignore. The roaring silence from the Arab League and the Muslim world over Darfur is inexcusable. Both the Arab aggressors and the black African victims are Muslims. So one might have expected to hear something from those quarters, at least a call from the former for Arab brethren to show restraint, if not condemnation from the latter of the massacre of Muslims. The European Union has not fared much better, offering weak words at best"

****************************