Mugabe and Milosevic

[marx_was_right]

I actually heard someone claim they were Marxists :D

Anyway, I havent read them yet but heres his argument...

Mugabe

The population of Zimbabwe is 13 million. The white population accounts for 70,000. 4,500 whites control half of the country's 81 million acres of arable land, while close to a million black farmers are crammed into the rest. The land the big landowners occupy is the most fertile, while that which the working black farmers have is the least fertile.

Following independance Mugabe said: 'It could never be a correct justification that because the whites oppressed us when they had power, the blacks must oppress them today because they have power.'

So an agreement was drawn up with collaboration with the UK and U.S. known as the Lancaster House agreement that stated no land redistribution would take place for 10 years, although it could purchase the land back. The U.S. agreed the donation of $2 billion to help the government purchase the land. An agreement had been drawn up for white-black co-operation. However the whites rejected the agreement and the U.S. failed to donate the $2 billion. As a result Mugabe decided to confiscate the land or else Zimbabwe would forever live in the shadow of colonialism. This is what provoked the imperialist press and white farmers.

Zanu PF also decided to reject the IMF's 'Austerity programme'. As a result sanctions were enforced and requests for loans rejected. In addition to this white farmers engaged in crop sabotage with co-operation from the imperialist powers. Whilst this went on the region saw problems with droughts to further worsen the situation.

It is not simply just this that has provoked the imperialist powers. You may be wondering why they have decided to pay such attention to this country of South Africa so far away from U.S. It is because in addition to what I have already mentioned, Zimbabwe has sent troops to aid the government in Congo in their repulsion of Rwandan and Ugandan forces, the invasion having been incited by the U.S. imperialists, as the U.S. became enraged at Congo's rejection of the U.S. economic designs for Africa.

And what about the great MDC (Movement for Democratic Change), I wonder who set up this movement and funds it? This very movement that supports the IMF and free market, that wants retension of land by the white minority and withdrawal of troops from Congo. And which individual is in league with the MDC as part of the U.S. set up Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, Chester Crocker, the notorious racist supporter of the Apartheid regime.

The truth is that only 160 members of opposition have died in the last 2 years, hardly noteworthy since most of the deaths have nothing to do with Mugabe. Generally the imperialist press rant about economic failure in Zimbabwe and of the suppression of the imperialist press who continue to write lies about Zimbabwe.

In addition, Mugabe is a Marxist and has bought working-class reforms to Zimbabwe. He has not introduced Marxist change yet or he liekly never will because of the obvious difficulties, look at what Zimbabwe faces at the moment never mind any more radical anti-imperialist, proletarian movement.

Neither is the economic downturn the fault of Zanu PF, rather it is the illegitimate imperialist sanctions and the fact that the CIA and imperialist dog farmers have taken to burning masses of crop fields to sabotage the economy. In addition, in the last 3 years the region has seen a massive economic downturn due to drought. Zimbabwe has actually come off better than the surrounding nations because of its residual economic strength that earnt it that so cliched title of the imperialist press.

Isn't it strange that Mugabe has been in power since the early 80's and has been elected for 5 successive terms. Indeed, he and Zanu PF alone made Zimbabwe the 'breadbasket of Africa’ and the best educated country in Africa that has the 86% literacy rate that is by far the highest.

Zanu PF and Mugabe are great people, and they deserve our respect and support. Why do so many of you continue to believe the imperialists, we know what they're aims are don't we? Please see what I am saying Urban Rubble, look at the facts and check some of them out for yourself, but don't believe lies and those who twist the truth.

One last thing... the MDC, i'll reiterate, is a joke. They are a weak group of rich imperialists hastily banded together by the U.S. They'll never defeat Zanu PF and the masses of working people in Zimbabwe. The imperialist campaign against them is effective, it was damage them greatly, but it is far from destroying them.

Indeed it is Morgan Tsvangiri who started calling Mugabe a fascist. The real fascists are racist American pigs and imperialist puppets such as Tsvangiri. How can you possible believe all the imperialist lies, its like the imperialists themselves believing everything Pravda ever said.

Not even did Mugabe force the land in to the hands of capitalists, it was at first spontaneously taken back by the poor blacks who have been stuffed in the most infertile, arid parts of the country.

The Guardian:
[they]"seized 841 white-owned farms in one week, and large groups of squatters were camped out on the farms, dividing their energies between planting out maize and singing revolutionary songs. One squatter leader is quoted as saying, "This land used to belong to our forefathers. We need this land. Our government will not tell us to move from here. Even if the police tell us to move, we will stay."

The Independant on Morgan Tsvangiri:
'this clown’s lack of "track record in the…struggle for independence" makes him dubious presidential material'

Well, let's also think about this. The only extents the government has gone too is to constitutionally legalise these land occupations. In fact, anyone is open to go to the courts and to the police and protest. Indeed, the police have gone to the courts to protest against what would have previously been a crime in illegal occupation of land. This is class struggle, that Zanu PF, and Mugabe, as socialists have facilitated in what they hope to make a state independant from imperialism and the ills it brings.

Black workers on white farms are forced to live in terrible conditions, working on the massive white estates picking coffee, tobacco, tea etc. Sounds a little familiar, what about 1800's U.S.?? this time though there are 4000 confederates backed by a superpower with a confederate mentality against all the landless blacks.

In 1997, the Guardian told how these workers, demanding to be paid £42 a month, "launched a wave of strikes that has brought the country’s commercial farming sector to its knees". "Thousands of singing, chanting workers … blocked highways for days," they reported, quoting one striker as saying: "We have been downtrodden too long. Zimbabwe is independent. We can stand up for our rights. We want better pay so our families can live better."

Milosevic

Milosevic is a socialist, he was attacked for being a socialist and he never committed any act of ethnic cleansing. Nowadays, Yugoslavia has been fragmented by the imperialist forces and is now subjected to their imperialist economic plans. There were thousands of refugees, but they were not victims of ethnic cleansing but rather NATO bombing. Now, Milosevic is being held to an illegitimate war-crimes trial. A treaty between nations needs to be drawn up for such a trial, but in Milosevic's case there was none. Although, they have not managed to prove anything as of yet since there is nothing to prove, it is expected the trial will last for years. I doubt they will ever let him go, but it does not matter as the damage to his nation has been done.

I will give you these sources to look at, they are very interesting and explain most of what I would explain:

http://free.freespeech.org/americanstatete...Oterrorism.html

http://www.agitprop.org.au/stopnato/199904...opagandawar.htm

http://www.lalkar.demon.co.uk/issues/conte...yugoslavia.html



strange eh.....

[mir]

To claim that Milosevic didn't commit any ethnic cleansings is absurd.  He killed the wrong people, he shouldn't have killed his own group he should have killed the foreign parasites and dumb siptars.

[turnoviseous]

Originally posted by mir
To claim that Milosevic didn't commit any ethnic cleansings is absurd.  He killed the wrong people, he shouldn't have killed his own group he should have killed the foreign parasites and dumb siptars.

The foreign parasites and siptars[Albanians - for those who don´t know]? WTF? Are you a fucking fascist?!!!!

[mir]

Please, I was saying that the foreigners and siptars ruined yugoslavia, our country of the south slavs.  Our country would be better without other minorities.  If that is a fascist point of view then i suppose I am.  Sometimes you have to protect yourself against foreigners.
Don't forget:
Bolje Grob nego Rob.

[marx_was_right]

Mir, I used to like your post's but you are beggining to sound like a bit of a Nazi :(

What do you mean "our country" the workers have no country.

And "foreigners" - what's that all about, if I came to "you're country" I would be a foreigner, but I am still working class so how could I be the enemy?

Capitalist and workers come from every country, nationality means nothing!

[OUTOFTHENIGHT]

The cause to all the atrocities commited in the former "yugoslavia" lie on the one hand the old communist bureaucrats who wanted to carve up their own spheres of interest, and on the other the interests of foreign/european(especially german) capital.Socialists and trade unionists from across the ethnic boundaries were not given any chance to express their independence.It was divide and rule and it led to the worst kind of barbarism that threw back the workers movement during the whole of the 1990s.
Mir, there is a lot of damage to be repaired and bridges to be built and it is the responsibility of every class conscious worker to do this.People like Milosevic were quite happy for workers to kill each other over ethnic and nationalist issues while at the same time living like millionaires.He is no socialist and personally I hope the guy rots.
Ian

[turnoviseous]

Mir, just WTFingF is that, man?! Come off with that social patriotism. If you are saving "your country", you are saving merely previleges of your national rulling capitalist class and their right to exploit more and more. Igor got it right...

And mir, just tell me how these people "robbed" your land? Was it because they had jobs and that way "honest and decent people were not able to work"? But this misses the whole point, because at the same time political bureaucrats and capitalists had big privileges and salaries. With acting in a fascist way (killing fellow foreign workers) you are merely saving the status quo - staving off crisis (in some sense) and preserving privileges of the rulling class.

[mir]

Okay, I guess you all are right.  I was talking about the foreigners that come the Former Jugoslavia to exploit it.  I really have no problems with minorities who are willing to learn about Jugoslavia and like the country but I do have a problem with people who come there to split us up.  All throughout our history, people have come to exploit us.  We finally really fought back during World War 2, that is also the beginning of the ethnic tensions.  Don't let the world lie to you, before world war 2, everyone liked each other.  The capitalists and the fascists were the ones who destroyed our country.  And I say that Albanians had alot to do with the de-stabilization and eventual civil war in Jugoslavija.  Don't get me wrong, however, I have no problems with peaceful and Albanians who work for the eventual revolution, but I do have a problem with Albanians who want to make war against people who are merely protecting their culture.  It's not just the Serbs that did the crimes in Kosovo.  Again, I apologize for some of my Fascist statements.

[marx_was_right]

Mir,

Maybe you could define "an Albanian" to us then?

Obviously it is someone who is born in Albania, however, they could be a multi-millionaire factory owner who exploits hundreds/thousands of workers.

Or they could be working class men and women, who work long shifts 6 and 7 days a week to try and feed their famillies and make ends meet.

I know you are trying to make a point, but my point is that you can't define a person by nationality just as much as you can define them by colour of skin/hair/sex/sexuality/size of tits etc...

[turnoviseous]

Hey comrade Mir,

SFRJ was a good demonstration that balkan people can live together without Balkan Wars as seen in the past.

The capitalists and the fascists were the ones who destroyed our country

Well, as a matter of fact they were only supporting the counter-revolution, which was led not by foreign capitalists or fascists, but by party´s bureaucracy (the leading cadres of the communist party - more precisely Communist Union as they called themselves). It all started in 1988 with the arrest of Janez Janša (who was the leader of slovenian socialist youth), and this order was sent by Belgrade´s party bureaucracy.

Again, I don´t want to praise Janez Janša in any way, because he was one of the leaders of the counter-revolution. But what is evident here are the conflicts between sections the stalinist SFRJ bureaucracy.

In the end of 90s it was evident that things won´t be able to go on on that basis (inflation was really really high - I still have old Yugoslav money printed in 1. 6. 1990, which feels like it was printed days ago) and bureaucracy saw restoration of capitalism as a way to protect their privileges and same was happening in SovietUnion. Then one bureaucracy poured scorn on the other and they led the movement to capitalism with the demagogy of "independence", althought what laied behind the demagogy was restoration of capitalism. Slovenian president recently admitted in his speech that "Slovenian leadership, when seceding from SFRJ, logically went on the capitalist basis of free market."

It would not be correct to say that foreign capitalists and fascists destroyed SFRJ. Foreign capitalists always wanted that SFRJ falls appart, from the very start. The real cause of its downfall is not in them, but in bureaucracy (officials of the so called Communist Unity).

[mir]

Igor,
An Albanian can be all the things you mentioned just like all people.  And turnoviseous, in 1989, Slovenia had the fewest participants in the Communist Youth Leagues.  After Tito, the Bureaucracy realized they couldn't compete with Western nations but they still didn't want to give up Socialism and the concept of "Brotherhood and Unity", in other words they wanted to carry on Tito's legacy.  But there is only one Tito.  The bureaucrats in SFRJ wanted to become closer to the west and they needed an excuse to use capitalist methods.  Kosovo became the excuse, throughout Serbia and Montenegro, a wave of "Patriotism" and hatred for Albanians rose up.  Milosevic, the opportunistic parasite that he is, exploited this and the bureaucracy saw Milosevic as some kind of prophet to keep them in power.  Other republics saw this and SFRJ ended.  All throughout this, the West looked eagerly on the situation in Eastern Europe and knew the end was near for Yugoslavia.  They decided to support the independence of republics and the Albanians in Kosovo.  This all could have been awerted by getting new and younger yet Socialist people into government and eliminating the rotating presidency, Freer elections, and handling the Kosovo situation differently by maybe making Kosovo a republic just like Bosnia or Slovenia.  Today, more and more people in Eastern Europe and especially former Yugoslavia are realizing what was lost under Communism, such as stability, jobs, and unity.  Milosevic, the West, and the former SFRJ bureaucracy didn't do anything to help the Yugoslav workers.

[turnoviseous]

The point I wanted to make is that even if there was Tito in SFRJ in 1980s and before the SFRJ fell apart, he practically couldn´t prevent it with administrative means, because the real problem was in economy which was being sabotaged by bureaucracy all the way from the end of WWII.

As Trotsky said, there were only 2 possibilities, either working class abolishes bureaucracy, or bureaucracy would abolish bureaucratically deformed socialism and went over to capitalism.

[mir]

Well if the Bad Bureaucracy dates back from World War 2, how do you explain the great prosperity and progress from 1945-1975, nearly 30 years!  I know near the end of Tito, the economy got worse but at that time Tito wasn't what he was in 1950.  I think if he was younger then he could have done alot more to improve the economy and avert the eventual civil war in spite of the bad bureaucracy.  Now, I realize there were some corrupt officials in government but that didn't stop the economy from growing in 1965 and if there was a younger socialist leader to sweep away those people in 1980 or as late as 1989, there would have been no civil war.

[turnoviseous]

Well, you see, planned economy is in itself more progressive mode of production than free market. Trotsky pointed out, that although bureaucracy made alot of waste with its mismanagement, it was still able to pull society forward for some time on the basis of planned economy. But then he showed that bureaucratic management (rather mismanagement) will eventually bring the crisis which will threaten bureaucratic privileges.

I suggest you check out writings of Serbian Trotskyists on this page:

http://members.tripod.com/crveni/

maybe you should start with this short article: Titoizam -

http://members.tripod.com/crveni/politika/titoizam.htm#vrh

And if you want to know more I suggest you check out great Trotsky´s book - Revolution Betrayed http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1936-rev/index.htm

And also great Ted Grant´s book From Revolution to Counter-Revolution in Russia, which can be found on http://www.marxist.com

comradely