Posted on 01/26/2007 6:50:37 AM PST by blam
Severe hunger looms for Zimbabwe
Many Zimbabweans look set to go hungry
Zimbabwe is facing a food deficit of hundreds of thousands of tonnes - a third of its requirements - an international monitoring agency warns. The Famine Early Warning System says the cereal balance sheet projects a shortfall in maize - the staple food - of some 850,000 tonnes.
By December only 152,600 tonnes had been delivered, meaning widespread hunger looks set to continue.
The monitors say Zimbabwe's lack of foreign currency is a key problem.
Crisis
The Zimbabwean government has refused to allow outside agencies to carry out crop assessments but the Famine Early Warning System used satellite images.
The government plans to import 565,000 tonnes of cereal - 60% of the projected deficit.
"It remains doubtful that Zimbabwe will be able to meet their import goals," the Famine Early Warning System said.
The monitors said a slight increase in national maize production, higher prices for South African maize and Zimbabwe's shortage of foreign currency due to its economic crisis were the leading causes of the lower levels of imports.
Zimbabwe has been gripped by an economic crisis for more than six years and has one of the world's lowest rates of life expectancy and the highest inflation rate.
Donors blame government mismanagement and the seizure of white-owned farms for Zimbabwe's economic problems.
President Robert Mugabe instead blames an international plot to remove him from power.
Zim Ping.
Hunger's next plan is to "attack" Venezuela.
Socialism fails every time it's tried.
Maybe it's good to see another painful reminder of that.
Famine in 2007. Good lord, how bad can a country be run to have a famine in this day and age. Didn't the left cheer this guy when he began re-distributing land to his cronies?
They took all the farms from the "whites" those farms still exist just under new management.
How come those farms fed everyone before and now they don't.
The inevitable result of communism. All are equally poor and miserable.
Their regime seized farms from their owners, like a good communist, and not the farms are not producing anything.
Their regime is the cause of the famine.
Rhodesia once was the bread basket of Africa.
Time to start eating your leaders.........first things first.
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The leader knows he only needs about 1/8 the people he has now, this is the easiest way to get there.
Hey that reminds me of an old Soviet joke:
Back in the 1970s, the commissar decides to visit the collective farm to see how things are going. "Comrade, how is the potato crop this year?" he asks the farmer.
The farmer thinks for a second and says "Comrade, the potato crop is so good this year that if you pile all the potatoes on top of each other, the pile would reach all the way to the gates of Heaven."
The commissar is aghast. "Comrade, this is the Soviet Union! We are atheists! There is no Heaven!"
"Exactly." said the farmer. "There are no potatoes either."
And he has made statments to this effect.
Zimbabwe's leadership takes lessons from the North Korean regime, which also allowed starvation to decimate its population in the 1990s.
The North Koreans were an early supporter of Mugabe's regime; there were State visits, "technological help", military training of the re-formed Zimbabwee Army (which so failed that the British, the hated "colonzers", were asked to come in and complete the job).Mugabe belongs in the next tier down from the Axis of Evil, only because he does not threaten anyone but his own population.
He is truly an Evil Man.
Alas, CNN will lament six killed in Somalia and ignore the hundreds of thousands who might die in Zim...
I've been offline, moving the household.
Any thing from Cathy B. lately?
The land is still there, but that's only a small part of what's needed.
All the seed has already been eaten up. The farms have been stripped of anything of value - tractors, harvesters, irrigation and processing machinery - even the wiring and plumbing from the farm houses.
Of course, all the live stock is gone, along with any wild game. Even the trees are gone, cut up for firewood.
Most important, the owners are gone. They were the only ones who cared enough to put in the hard work and make something out of their farms. The government owns them now, despite what it says about returning it to its ancestral owners. Mugabe took it away from the white owners, then took it away from the squatters who thought they were the new owners. If someone was stupid enough to try and plant and cultivate it, Mugabe would show up at harvest and take that away too.
In essence, Mugabe or his cronies own them now, what's left of them. Why don't you ask him why Zimbabwe can't feed itself?
For the same reason that possession of a musical instrument does not convey make the possessor a virtuoso. The land in competent hands not only fed the nation, it generated a surplus to feed neighboring countries and created positive cash flow due to the trade. The socialists complained that the white farmers controlled all of the best land. The poor blacks couldn't compete with what remained. The blatant falsehood of that claim is now obvious.
What, no "We are the World" benefits from Hollywood?
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