Zimbabwe

Update (15:50 EST, Feb. 22): Twitchy reports Amanpour deleted the tweet and subsequently insisted her birthday wish was ironic.

"[W]hat do you get for the serial human rights abuser who has everything?" the folks at Twitchy snarked today reacting to this tweet by CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour: "Happy Birthday, President Mugabe: http://on.cnn.com/VQ4kTK #Zimbabwe"

But wait, it gets better. The link in the tweet takes viewers to a short video [embedded below the page break] narrated by the CNN anchor, which opens with a strange comparison to Pope Benedict XVI:

In an unbylined item Sunday evening, the Associated Press informed readers that Venezuelan ruler Hugo Chavez, continuing a six-year campaign of agricultural land seizures, has ordered the expropriation of a huge swath of farmland from a British company, and unilaterally decided that any compensation which might occur will be paid in his country's own currency, over which the country's banks exercise strict repatriation controls.

The report frames the amount of land being seized in a way which will ensure that many readers won't appreciate its massive scope. More important, in something seen frequently in reports about authoritarian regimes, it treats the specific objections of opponents -- in this case, current landowners -- as arguments instead of observable and determinable facts. Here are several paragraphs from the report (bolds are mine):

The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.

Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."

It's hardly news that black conservatives are reviled among much of the left. There seems to be a sense among much of the liberal media that they have betrayed their own interests through their conservative principles.

Few, however, would have the (dare I say it) audacity to lump prominent and accomplished African American political figures in with oppressive genocidal dictators and serial killers.

But TheRoot.com, a blog owned by the Washington Post, seems to have no qualms about doing so, as evidenced in its list of 21 "Black Folks We'd Like To Remove From Black History". Among the names are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele.

Also included on the list: murderous Ugandan military dictator Idi Amin, the notorious "DC Sniper" John Allen Muhammad, Zimbabwean kleptocrat Robert Mugabe and the ruthless father-and-son Haitian dictators "Papa Doc" and "Baby Doc" Duvalier.

I held this item for a couple of days after I found it because I didn't want to spoil Christmas. Readers can fairly criticize me for waiting.

It is truly astonishing how little attention this two week-old story has received (Warning: Very disturbing content; the underlying news at caritas.org is here; bolds are mine)

Out of food, Zimbabweans eating cow dung

Harare, Dec 10, 2008 / 08:01 pm -- Caritas Internationalis is warning that the crisis in Zimbabwe is so grave that people facing crushing food shortages are mixing cow dung with their food.

With pressure continuing to mount on President Mugabe to relinquish his hold on power, Zimbabweans are suffering the consequences of his government’s policies.

Besides the lack of food, people are also suffering a cholera epidemic and crippling hyperinflation.

You would be hard-pressed to find a "better" example of a walking, talking, typing Old Media double standard-bearer than New York Times columnist and International Herald Tribune (IHT) contributor Nicholas Kristof.

Keep in mind as you read this post that Kristof infamously wrote the following in a 2005 New York Times book review about the person who was "the worst monster in world history," China's Mao Tse-tung (Mao Zedong):

..... his legacy is not all bad ..... The emancipation of women and end of child marriages moved China from one of the worst places in the world to be a girl to one where women have more equality than in, say, Japan or Korea. ..... Mao’s ruthlessness was a catastrophe at the time ..... yet there’s more to the story: Mao also helped lay the groundwork for the rebirth and rise of China after five centuries of slumber.

Here is Kristof describing an example of what is currently happening in Zimbabwe in the June 29 IHT (bold after headline is mine):

Robert Mugabe continues to take Zimbabwe into utter ruin. A former breadbasket when it was colonial Rhodesia, it is now a starving, rotting basket case.

The latest development in the ongoing nightmare: A sham "runoff" election where Mugabe is the only candidate, thanks to "violence against .... opposition members," whose candidate dropped out of the race less than a week ago.

For nearly a decade, we've been told, "Don't worry, (South African President Thabo) Mbeki will handle him."

In an article carrying today's date, the New York Times's Celia W. Dugger and Barry Bearak continue to make excuses for Mbeki. More on that shortly.

Meanwhile, the downward spiral has continued to the point where the country of roughly 13 million is now in a dire humanitarian crisis:

On Tuesday’s CBS "Evening News" anchor Katie Couric reported on Zimbabwe’s opposition leader dropping out of an election against the nation’s socialist dictator, Robert Mugabe, and lamented how: "The fear and danger that now pervades the streets of Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe is a tragic departure from the hope and promise that began with his landslide victory nearly 30 years ago." File footage of an unidentified reporter covering Mugabe’s 1980 election followed: "A self-described Marxist has won the right to form the first government of the new state of Zimbabwe."

Couric continued to describe Mugabe’s promising rise to power:

When Robert Mugabe was first elected in 1980, he was a hero. He was seen as one of Africa's most promising black leaders...The son of a carpenter, the revolutionary and former school teacher said he had, quote, "inherited the jewel of Africa." A country rich in resources, Zimbabwe claimed independence from Britain in 1965 when it was known as Rhodesia. During the '80s, Zimbabwe's government received international support...at a time its neighbor, South Africa, practiced apartheid. The country's economic condition and public health improved. But in the '90s, Mugabe became more authoritarian. This one-time revolutionary squashed all opposition and faced charges of cronyism and corruption.

President Bush is holding a press conference on the U.S. economy. I'll be blogging the questions to the president below.

Video of Bush/Raddatz clash here (audio available here).

Video of Stolberg and Ryan on recession here (audio here)

My bottom line analysis (11:25): The two R's of bias from this Rose Garden presser: Martha Raddatz on Syria and numerous reporters on the dreaded R-word, recession. Of course a recession is two consecutive quarters of NEGATIVE economic growth, and we've yet to see one quarter of negative growth, much less two. But all the same, NY Times's Stolberg made it sound like Q1 numbers on GDP tomorrow will show a recession.

The questions below will be posted in reverse chronological order:

As gas prices are on a springtime upswing and the summer driving season is upon us, NewsBusters and the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute have documented the media's persistent hype about gas prices.

But if the media really want a story about an economy running on fumes, they need look no further than Zimbabwe, where socialistic thuggery has resulted in a starving nation bedeviled with 3,700 percent annual inflation and electricity rationing.

Oh, things weren't always this bad. This time last year it was only at 1,000 percent inflation in Zimbabwe, and that's over 100 times worse than the single-digit "stagflation" that then-CNN contributor Andy Serwer feared just five months before the 2006 midterms.

On the one hand, I have to give the Washington Post credit for frontpaging today's story on longtime Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe's campaign of police thuggery against opposition leaders.

Yet when I looked through the article, I found no mention that Mugabe is a socialist or leftist, nor was he labeled a dictator.

In fact, the only dictator reference came in a graph that noted that the latest high-profile victim of Mugabe's violence, opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, has himself been accused by political rivals of having "dictatorial tendencies."

[more after the drop]