Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
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"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
Obviously. This article reports that the tobacco crop in Zimbabwe is failing.
Nearly three years of rural instability has badly damaged Zimbabwe's crucial tobacco harvest, with the country likely to sell only a fraction of the tobacco it did in 2000, producers said Tuesday.
The plunge in sales of tobacco, the nation's top hard currency earner, will further damage an already withering economy suffering from runaway inflation and unemployment of nearly 60 percent.
Net earnings from tobacco were likely to drop from 400 million US dollars in 2000, before the government began its program to seize white-owned commercial farms, to 105 million US dollars next year, said Oliver Gawe, spokesman for the Zimbabwe Tobacco Association.
Tobacco traditionally accounts for more than 30 percent of the country's hard currency earnings, vital for purchasing fuel and corn needed to stave off a hunger crisis that threatens more than half the nation's population.
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