Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Crack Commandos in Zimbabwe

We don't smoke marijuana in Muskogee,
We don't take our trips on LSD ...
We don't let our hair grow long and shaggy,
Like the hippies out in San Francisco do.
-- Okie from Muskogee

Well Muskogee isn't in Zimbabwe, where apparently you can do dope and still qualify for Robert Mugabe's elite special forces. It may be in fact that you have to do dope to enter this august body of troops. The Zimbabwean Pundit writes that drugged soldiers brutalized Tsvangirai in a regime where "crack Commando" may have a whole new meaning. (BTW Morgan Tsvangirai has a "cracked skull" according to Reuters)


A crack Commando unit based at the army’s Cranborne Barracks in Harare was responsible for the brutal torture of Morgan Tsvangirai and other opposition leaders on Sunday, according to a police officer who witnessed the assault. ...

"They (soldiers) were dressed in police uniform and had bloodshot eyes. They told us they were police officers, but I managed to identify them as Commandos because of the green army belts they were wearing on top of the uniforms.

It is uncertain whether the key recognition feature of Mugabe's commandos were their green belts or the bloodshot eyes. In any case their status entitles them to a special grade of marijuana when going on extraordinary perilous beating missions.

Only commandoes wear those. One of them announced that they had smoked a special grade of marijuana for the special mission. I witnessed the whole incident. Police officers from Machipisa were not involved. We were stunned at the ruthlessness. "They were shouting and telling Tsvangirai that they could kill him on that night and nothing would happen to them," said the officer. The police officer said the beatings started at 11.45pm and lasted for more than two hours.

Update

Here's a blast from the past. Dan Rather holds up Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe as the model for South Africa in 1994. The video an interesting example of how the media once viewed Robert Mugabe and what the received wisdom of the recent past was.

Here's what the black population of Zimbabwe is reduced to eating today. Rats.

7 Comments:

Blogger James Kielland said...

The role of drugs in the fighting man in both the past - and the future - is certainly rather interesting. Some insist on a lingustic connection between "assasin" and "hashish." During the Somalia operations in the early 1990s we had a local plant called "khat" that got the local armed men rather excited and fearless. And looking towards the future, the Pentagon's resident futurist, Andrew Marshall, noted: ""One future intelligence problem: knowing what drugs the other guys are on."

3/13/2007 09:23:00 PM  
Blogger James Kielland said...

This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

3/13/2007 09:24:00 PM  
Blogger AspergersGentleman said...

I hope against hope that this is a wake-up call to America just how SPUTNIK was. American foreign policy slops about like a formless mop, while it could be animated by shrewd biochemistry into a Sorcerer's Apprentice sweeping-force worthy of the Great White Fleet.

What about force transformation? Whose to say it cannot have a psychedelic component? Whose to say we cannot mobilize a division of remote viewers? How many psychonauts and psilo-agents have we deployed in service to lady liberty? I'll let that question hang in the air like GHGs emitted from Snoop himself.

3/13/2007 10:36:00 PM  
Blogger Deuce ☂ said...

james kielland and aspergers are still around. Did not see Mr kielland at the Pub and asprin has not lost his effervescent edge.

3/13/2007 10:42:00 PM  
Blogger James Kielland said...

Aspergers: we already had a psychedelic force transformation attempt. What many people don't realize is that the 1960s LSD fueled counter-culture movement was a inadvertent creation of the US defense establishment. Timothy Leary, the godfather of the psychedelic craze, got started as a researcher at Harvard where he was working under contract from the CIA to study the possibilities of LSD. This all spun out of such programs as MK-ULTRA and MK-DELTA, which were part of some of the most disturbing violations of human rights in the 20th century.

I'm absolutely sure that the Pentagon is continuing to fund research in this area; as my previous post noted, Mr. Marshall is quite fascinated by this stuff. And it will probably have some rather gruesome unintended consequences that will make the 1960s seem like innocent child's play.

2164th: Hi! No, I've not been there in quite a while. I hope all is well with you.

3/13/2007 10:57:00 PM  
Blogger Habu said...

The CIA did some way cool experiments with LSD and other drugs before I got there. The stories would still float around in the cafeteria, jokes about the birds that were trapped inside the cafeteria being experiment losers in the psych-sweepstakes.

But they cracked down and went on to other experimnets I hope, I wasn't in that area.
Unlike the argument you hear about those who didn't serve in the armed forces not being able to speak to the points of military activity, I don't agree. They're just usually wrong and usually have never endured any hardship beyond an ill fiting pair of shoes.

The CIA is different. Outnumbered 10 to 1 by the KGB and GRU at the height of the cold war and playing a game covered by no rules, those who pass judgement on the CIA's activities are more than clueless as to what goes on inside.
I would direct their attention to the histories of the Okhranka, then to "Iron Felix",Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky and his Cheka. That trail leads to the GPU,NKVD, and then the KGB. Size them up and see if you want the Boy Scouts to go against them or hard men and women who can play at the same level as their adversaries.
Monday morning quarterbacking intelligence operations is a game played with no knowledge or understanding of the game.

3/14/2007 11:32:00 AM  
Blogger Nancy Reyes said...

You are missing the point. In Africa, such drug use is witchcraft. It loosens one's inhibitions to kill.
Often boys are drafted, and then initiated into evil by such drugs and ceremonies (e.g. eating flesh). They then think they are unredeemable, and give themselves in to the devil/evil.

One suspects Mugabe might have used such ceremonies to get power. (Yes, I know he is a communist, but Hitler was an athiest but involved in the Thor society).
Ironically, the way to defeat this evil is to use good.
So Idi Amin was overthrow by a neighboring country's army who had undergone a "protection ceremony".
Some Christian groups in Africa also recognize evil and use exorcisms to destroy satanic pacts. That might be why the prayer rally was so dangerous to Mugabe...sort of a double whammy, of human and spiritual power.

Oh, if you don't believe in the supernatural, it doesn't matter. It can be explained by psychology. But my point is that most Africans believe in the supernatural elements of good and evil, and that the evil powers can make you healthy, wealthy, and powerful.

3/14/2007 05:11:00 PM  

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