The A***oles didn't fall far from the tree: Trumps sons pose with their dead animals

[ellisonz]

63. How do your ears not prick up when you hear the word Zimbabwe?

...There are more worthy things to get upset about and this is part and parcel of things worthy of getting upset about, as it is pretty likely these chaps were being profited off of by the lackeys of brutal dictator. I presume you've heard of Mr. Mugabe and ZANU-PF?

Inside the hidden links between American big-game hunters and Zimbabwe’s Mugabe dictatorship.
By Joshua Hammer
Newsweek
Updated: 5:58 p.m. ET Jan. 13, 2006

Jan. 13, 2006 - Jocelyn Chiwenga is not a woman to be taken lightly. The wife of Gen. Constantine Chiwenga, commander-in-chief of Zimbabwe’s army, Mrs. Chiwenga has earned a reputation in her own right as a vicious enforcer for President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Popular Front (ZANU-PF). In April 2002 she reportedly showed up at a farm outside Harare, the capital, with an armed gang and ordered the farm’s white owner to turn over his property to her or be killed, according to documents filed in a Zimbabwean court. One year later, Chiwenga accosted Gugulethu Moyo, an attorney for a pro-opposition newspaper, and beat her so severely that she had to seek medical attention. “Your paper wants to encourage anarchy in this country,” Chiwenga reportedly shouted as she punched and slapped the 28-year-old lawyer on a Harare street. “Chiwenga is as close to the center of power as you get,” says David Coltart, a parliamentarian and leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, the country’s main opposition party.

She also knows how to use her power. About three years ago, Chiwenga won an auction for a coveted lease on a 220-square-mile tract of bush, owned by Zimbabwe’s Parks and Wildlife Authority, located just outside Hwange National Park in southwest Zimbabwe. Abounding in the Big Five—lion, elephant, Cape buffalo, leopard, and black rhino—Chiwenga’s property has since become a choice destination for professional hunters, particularly well-heeled Americans.

Now, Chiwenga’s business ambitions—as well as her political clout—have brought her to the attention of the U.S. government. Last November, the Treasury Department added Chiwenga, 50, to a list of 128 Mugabe relatives and cronies who are “undermining democratic processes or institutions in Zimbabwe.” The Treasury Department has blocked the assets of those on the list and established penalties of up to $250,000 and 10 years’ imprisonment for anyone who does business with them. And that executive order has put dozens, if not hundreds, of Americans who hunt on her land in legal jeopardy.

Chiwenga’s sanctioning by the U.S. government has drawn new attention to the unsavory, and usually hidden, links between American sportsmen and the Mugabe dictatorship. During the past six years, Zimbabwe’s economy has been in free fall, with the country’s gross domestic product dropping by half and agricultural production sinking by more than 80 percent. But hunting has remained one of the country’s few thriving industries, bringing in as much as $30 million annually, according to conservationists and professional hunters in Zimbabwe. Much of that cash has gone into the coffers of ZANU-PF insiders, who have gained control of government-owned safari land at below market prices, reportedly through rigged auctions in many cases. One of Chiwenga’s neighbors in the Victoria Falls area is Webster Shamu, Mugabe’s Minister of Policy Implementation, and a key architect of Operation Murambatsvina—“Clean out the Rubbish”—the brutal slum clearance program that has left some 700,000 poor black Zimbabweans homeless. (Shamu is among the original 77 insiders who had their assets frozen and were barred from entering the United States by the Treasury Department in 2003). Another big player is Jacob Mudenda, the former governor of Matabeleland North. All of them do a brisk business catering to professional American hunters, who make up about half of the clientele, according to industry insiders.

More: http://www.zimbabwesituation.com/jan15_2006.html

And in case you know nothing of Zimbabwe, the abstract of the 2011 Amnesty International Annual Report on human rights in Zimbabwe:

Police continued to arbitrarily arrest and detain human rights defenders and journalists undertaking legitimate human rights work. There was some loosening of restrictions on the media and Parliament debated a bill to reform the repressive Public Order and Security Act (POSA). Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people faced persecution. The victims of the 2005 forced evictions continued to live in deplorable conditions with some being targeted for eviction or facing the threat of eviction.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/region/zimbabwe/report-2011