What about black Zimbabweans today, lenin?

lenin provides us with a breathless and damning obituary of white bogey man, the eviiiil Ian Smith, the much reviled former white leader of Zimbabwe, who, like Mugabe today, opposed British attempts to make the country democratic. (Many of us thought he was already dead).

What's immediately striking is how much effort lenin puts into condemning this relic of the past compared to his utter silence at the far worse situation in that country today. lenin has never mentioned, and doesn't here, that Zimbabwe now has the lowest life expectancy in the world, terrible human rights abuses, or the ongoing destruction of the model economy, free press and first class democratic institutions it inherited. It really is one of the great crimes of our times what has happened to that country in recent years, yet none of that is of the remotest interest for lenin compared to the much more important task of looking back in great detail at Britain's wrong doings 50 and 100 years ago. His only comment about the present situation is to make the obscene claim that getting rid of the hand full of white farmers that remain will solve the countries problems; he knows full well it a policy that has created famine.

It echoes precisely the sort of language Mugabe uses as cover every time he launches a new crack down on his people.

Of course debating British history is a perfectly legitimate thing to do, but put in the context of the Tomb's other-worldly agenda - i.e pretending that the modern day world is no different from the height of the British empire therefore we need to support any old racist despot who oppresses their people as long as they oppose whitey's capitalist ways - puts a rather sinister slant on these things. That is unfortunate.