[Technocrat]

Has anybody heard of even one instance where the farmers have confronted and killed the invaders? Do any of these people have a backbone? A lot of these guys are in their 70s and 80s - they should be far more cantankerous and far less caring about their own lives. Sonething doesn't compute here. We are being denied critical information, either on one side, or on the other.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

This has been a drip, drip situation. Many of the "war veterans," really young Mugabe thugs, have been camped outside these farms for months, intimidating and harrassing the farm famlies, including beatings and killing 10 or more. I think they're just plain traumatized.

Here's just some of it.

[Guillermo]

It's real easy to act so tough when you're safe and sound behind your computer, 5,000 miles away from the action.

But of course, it it was *you*, you and your 2 guns would have been blazing away at the hundreds, thousands of thugs gathered outside your doors.

[Nov3]

Do any of these people have a backbone?

I am sure you would be much braver looking at leaving your family without a breadwinner in a country going into a famine. You could provide for them much better in the no doubt luxurious jail system if you survived. Your wife and children would no doubt enjoy being raped and beaten by Mugabes war heroes.

South Africa is not far behind.

[Travis McGee]

/1/ The vast majority of the hard core Rhodesian fighters left the country in the 1980s, there was too much bitterness and too many grudges for them to stick around. The small minority of whites who stayed on were the most (foolishly) optimistic of the bunch, the true (naive) liberals among white Rhodesians who trusted Mugabe's word.

/2/ The few fighters who are left are spread like atoms across an area the size of Texas. They are too weak to act as individuals, and are too far apart and isolated to act in groups. Armed resistance at this point by whites would be a suicidal gesture, their families and children would be tortured and raped to death in the brutal retribution which would follow.

[Campion]

Well (not that you couldn't have guessed this), Zimbabwe has very strict gun control laws. Only Mugabe's thugs are armed.

You have to be pretty cantankerous to face a 17-year-old carrying an AK-47 armed with only a machete.