Zimbabwe+PIC

OBSERVATION 1: CP TEXT THE USFG SHOULD DO ALL PARTS OF THE PLAN PRESENTED IN THE 1AC, WITH THE EXCEPTION OF GIVING PUBLIC HEALTH ASSISTANCE TO ZIMBABWE

OBSERVATION 2: The Counterplan competes with the following net benefits:

A. Zimbabwe is overwhelmingly corrupt under president Mugabe Robyn Sassen, reviewer of public affairs for PopMatters, 2003 (“Shooting Ones Self in the Foot”) http://www.popmatters.com/books/reviews/o/our-votes-our-guns.shtml

Beginning in the early 1980s, after gaining power, Mugabe equipped himself and his ruling party to annihilate all of his political opposition. This was the birth place of an elite fighting force known as 5 Brigade, trained by North Korean agents to ruthlessly carry out acts of terror on the civilian populations. Corruption and economic mismanagement raged unchecked; government positions were rotten with nepotism and patronage. The country's white community was hard hit by Mugabe's xenophobia and racism, causing many, including the farmers who had competently maintained the country's economic back bone by keeping the lands fertile and productive for generations, to flee, literally empty-handed and for their lives. These farmers may, in the early days, have supported Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front, which condoned a pro-apartheid system of rule, but proved, after independence to be staunch supporters for the status quo and the change of hands. It didn't help, though.

B. Aid to Zimbabwe fails and directly leads to an increase in corruption and poverty Ryan Olivett, intern at the Independence Institute, 2007 (“Realism and Real American Interests.” The National Nexus.) http://olivett.townhall.com/

Zimbabwe, for example, received an average of around $440 million in aid per year between 1980 and 1999, according to the OECD. In 1980 average annual income was $950. By 2003 it had plummeted to $400. When the government initiated “land reform” by seizing private land from farmers, it sent the economy into a tailspin. Today Zimbabwe has the highest inflation in the world and a negative growth rate. These dismal results beg the question: Where does all the aid go? It goes directly to corrupt governments. Governments in Africa are the most corrupt on the planet. The Sub-Saharan Zimbabwe PIC

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region is ranked dead last for freedom from corruption in the Wall Street Journal’s Index of Economic Freedom.

C. Mugabe has taken his corrupt practices to a whole new level: genocide- giving aid is supporting and endorsing it Duncan Du Bois, writer for the Natal Witness, 2007 (“Zimbabwe- the Road to Genocide.” The Free Republic.) http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/837660/posts

The reason the purveyors of political correctness insist there is no genocide in Zimbabwe is because mass killings are not taking place. But, as with the Nazis, the development of genocide involves six stages before mass slaughter begins. According to the report, there is compelling evidence that Zimbabwe is now in the sixth stage of the process. With its history of ethnic clashes between the Shona and Ndebele, both before and since colonialism, the primary condition leading to genocide is inherent in Zimbabwe. In the early eighties the Ndebele were on the receiving end of Mugabe's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade which, in two spates of ethnic cleansing, killed between 20 000 and 40 000 Ndebeles as a precursor to the third stage of the process, namely, dehumanisation. By means of media and political dominance Mugabe has ensured a steady escalation in the polarisation of Zim society. Through hate speech, incitement and vilification "out" groups like the Ndebele, the MDC and white commercial farmers have been subjected to a process of dehumanisation. This has included the denial of constitutional rights and the use of state-sanctioned terrorism. The latter has ensured progress to the fourth stage - mobilisation of state forces. What started with the so-called war veterans, assisted by the police and military, now includes a rapidly growing youth militia called the "green bombers". In the past three years there has been a proliferation of militia groups in Zimbabwe, all dedicated to the systematic disruption, deprivation and displacement of those belonging to the "out' groups. Human rights groups have observed that patterns of torture used by these groups supports the notion that torture techniques are part of their training. And in the past 10 months, the ranks of the green bombers have grown to 9 000. Phase five of the road to genocide involves the silencing of all critical voices. To date Mugabe has expelled almost all foreign journalists, tortured and harassed local journalists and bombed opposition newspapers. The trial of MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai for treason is a further manifestation of phase five's drive to eliminate opposition. Not surprisingly, Zimbabwe has been assessed recently as one of the most oppressed states in the world. According to Genocide Watch, Zimbabwe is now well into phase six of the descent to genocide: the final preparation. Although there are no concentration camps, the country has been divided into "no go" areas: towns are split from the countryside; rural areas are being "sealed up" and the movements of people are Zimbabwe PIC

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monitored - even the flights of light aircraft. Access to food and essentials is politically controlled. Truckloads of displaced people are dumped daily on land that cannot support large-scale habitation. Mass starvation, as Stalin found, removes political problems. Green bomber camps are being established in each district primed to exterminate opposition hot spots. Zimbabwe, says Genocide Watch, is now poised for genocide. Reinforcing that assessment is the massive militarisation of all state, parastatal and NGO sectors. Eight million people are starving in Zimbabwe, their plight deliberately engineered by Mugabe. In terms of Article Three of the Genocide Convention, conspiracy to commit genocide and complicity in genocide are acts that are punishable. Yet the ANC applauds Mugabe's Zanu-PF as being "progressive" and Jacques Chirac of France shelters behind semantics in justifying Mugabe's visit to Paris.