[. . . Like the ‘Genetic Fallacy’ in logic, the 'Genocide Fallacy' invalidates all arguments or institutions premised on it because of its essential flaw, its original sin, its falsifying bias. But to experts, scholars like Guichaoua et al, the Rwandan Genocide of 800,000 to a million Tutsis and moderate Hutus between 6 April 1994 (the date of the assassinations by the RPF [and no one any longer seriously argues this fact, wetfe The New Yorker readership might think!] of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi (Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, resp.), as well as the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Army (as The General will point out, this position should not be confused or conflated, as it often is by these experts, with the Chief of Staff of the Rwandan Armed Forces [FAR], which was made up of the Army and the Natl. Gendarmerie, and commanded by the President or, in his absense, the Minister of Defense [both civilian positions]), and 16 July 1994, when the RPF had effectively seized power throughout the country, and claimed to have stopped the 100 days of Genocide (which they, in fact, date as far back as the Social Revolution of 1959-1962 that deposed the Tutsi monarchy and instituted, by majority vote and UN recognition, the Rwandan Republic). ]


OBSERVATIONS ON THE BOOK BY ANDRÉ GUICHAOUA
“RWANDA, FROM WAR TO GENOCIDE”
EDITION: LA DECOUVERTE, PARIS


Open letter addressed to Mr. André Guichaoua, Professor at the University of Paris 1, Pantheon-Sorbonne, France

by
General Augustin Ndindiliyimana
4 August 2010
[translated from the French by Christopher Black & Mick Collins]

Dear Professor,

I have always read your books and certain of your statements on Rwanda with great interest. I believe that an expert, one who is motivated by a real desire to discover the truth, should never avoid any ideas or information that come his way. This is why I am sending you my observations on your recent book, “Rwanda, from War to Genocide.” I do not believe anyone can pretend to know the whole truth about a situation as complex as the tragedy that unfolded in Rwanda. It was in my desire to contribute to the search for truth that, in 1997, I sent a similar letter to Professor Reyntjens . I also addressed myself to Mme Alison Des Forges’s book, “Aucun témoins ne doit survivre” [“Leave None to Tell the Story”]. My observations on Mme Des Forges’s work were entered into evidence before the ICTR.

I will limit the observations of your work I am offering here to the essential points that concern me directly. I will not comment on what is contained in Mme Pauline Nyiramasuhuko’s diary, because I am not surprised that she noted my presence in Murambi on 13 and 22 April 1994. I was there on the 13th to ask the government to support the negotiations between the FAR and the RPF, and on the 22nd with Colonel Rusatira to ask the Ministers and Politicians present to make greater efforts toward the pacification of the country.   more »

Monsieur le Professeur,

J’ai toujours lu avec intérêt vos écrits et certaines de vos déclarations concernant le dossier rwandais. Je considère qu’un expert animé d’une volonté de découvrir la vérité ne peut rien négliger des idées et informations qui peuvent lui parvenir en tout temps. C’est pourquoi, je vous adresse mes observations qui se limiteront à votre récent livre « Rwanda, De la guerre au Génocide ». Je pense que personne ne peut prétendre être détenteur de la vérité totale sur une situation aussi complexe que les évènements tragiques survenus au Rwanda. C’est dans le souci d’apporter ma contribution à la recherche de la vérité qu’en 1997, j’ai adressé une lettre de mise au point au Professeur Reyntjens1. J’ai fait le même travail pour Madame Alison Des Forges sur son livre « Aucun témoin ne doit survivre ». Mes observations adressées à Madame Des Forges ont été déposées en preuve devant le TPIR.

Dans le travail que je me propose de faire pour vous, je me limiterai uniquement aux points essentiels qui me concernent. Je ne ferai pas de commentaires sur les écrits contenus dans l’agenda de Madame Pauline Nyiramasuhuko car je ne suis pas surpris qu’elle ait noté ma présence à Murambi le 13 et le 22 avril 1994. La première fois c’était pour demander au gouvernement de soutenir les négociations des FAR avec le FPR et le 22 avril 1994 avec le Colonel Rusatira pour demander aux ministres et aux politiciens présents de faire plus d’efforts pour la pacification du pays.

(à suivre en PDF attaché)   more »

With the Fascist rampage against History as a way to terrorize the world public into accepting Exchange Value—in its most mindless, immaterial, and speculative form—which so obviously has sucked all the (Real) Life from anything that anymore resembles Use Value (concentrating the largest part of human [re]productive energies into the creation of pure, and even toxic, Waste, privileging exchanges of Nothing for Nothing, accompanied by unimaginably large brokerage fees, interest charges, back-end point on the distributor’s gross, penalties for early withdrawal and other such forms of financial racketeering, and completely corroding the whole process of life)—the Global Economy finds itself having been turned into a great Human History shredder (sorta, HIGO: human history in, garbage out)—with even its insensate production of destruction—the manufacture of war and needless suffering unto death—not being able to bring it to social and political equilibrium.    more »

We kick off the International Defense Committee for ALL Political Prisoners and POWs of NATO/UN*** with one of its founding members, Chris Black’s response to Professor Jeremy Kuzmarov’s Review of Edward S. Herman and David Peterson's “The Politics of Genocide,” foreword by Noam Chomsky (Monthly Review Press, 2010). As the name of the Committee might suggest, the scope of our concerns and intentions is very—perhaps, even too broad. So we’re hoping Maitre Black’s article will help us focus on the effects of a continuing falsification of History by the forces of Fascism. This manufacture of mass lies has been trying to rid our world of all rational experiments in revolutionary socialism or communism since October 1917. It is this anti-intellectual and anti-social pathology against which the Committee seeks to defend all political prisoners of this global military occupation by Western Waste Capital.   more »

{ERRATUM: We were seriously mistaken interpretting the petition being circulated by Diana Johnstone and David Peterson as pertaining to all International Political Prisoners--Political Prisoners and POWs of NATO and the UN--when they intended it only to address the singularly horrible attack against General Krstic allowed to occur at Wakefield prison in the UK. The petition has been well received, and so we sincerely hope that our overzealousness has not done too great a disservice to Diana and David's cause. The Internation Committee to Defend these Prisoners is a matter separate and apart. We will deal more with it very soon. Please continue to support the petition for the just decent treatment of General Krstic--an innocent man.--mc}

Voices of Concern for the Treatment of International Political Prisoners

The vicious May 7 attack on General Radislav Krstic in Wakefield Prison (U.K.) is a dramatic illustration of the failure to ensure the safety of the prisoners of international tribunals.

A Serb native of Bosnia, General Krstic was sentenced to 35 years in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for complicity in 1995 Srebrenica massacres, although it is acknowledged that he was not directly involved in criminal executions. General Krstic repeatedly denied any knowledge of the massacres at the time, and his sentence is regarded as excessive and politically motivated by many informed observers who believe the case should be reopened.

On May 7, General Krstic was physically assaulted by three inmates identified as "Muslims." A 22-year-old ethnic Albanian named Indrit Krasniqi is reported to have slit the throat of General Krstic, narrowly missing the jugular.

Krasniqi, 22, was serving a life sentence under British law for the gang torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl. Wakefield Prison, in the north of England, is reserved especially for criminals serving long sentences for grave sex offenses.

We find it highly irresponsible of British authorities to incarcerate General Krstic, essentially a prisoner of war, in such an environment. Now 62 years old, General Krstic is disabled, having lost a leg in the Bosnian war. There is an obvious risk in imprisoning a Bosnian Serb accused of grave crimes against Muslims in a region of England with a particularly large Muslim population. The claim that the attack was motivated by "Muslim revenge" serves as a smokescreen to cover the responsibility of British authorities.

The near-fatal attack on General Krstic comes in the wake of an extraordinary series of deaths of prisoners held by the International Criminal Tribunals for former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda.


We, the undersigned, demand:   more »

In fact, on first looking at the Mutsinzi Committee Report, the reader understands right away that the mission of this so-called Independent Committee of Experts is to exonerate the very people who ordered the attack, namely President Paul Kagame and his military and political collaborators. So, from the first lines describing the methodology of its investigation, analysis and the presentation of its findings, the Mutsinzi Committee tries to lead the reader to share its a priori consideration that “the post-genocide Rwandan authorities” are “convinced that their non-involvement in the attack of 6 April 1994” is “verified by the evidence,” and that it was “the extremist Hutus of the former regime” who are, in fact, responsible for the attack. It is this postulate that colors the entire Mutsinzi Report.

This way of forming a Committee to investigate an attack in which the highest officials of the country have been cited as presumptively responsible for the crime leaves no doubt as to the Committee’s dependence. This is why, as we will demonstrate with what follows, instead of basing its conclusions on objective, credible and probative elements; instead of taking into consideration testimony from those who live in or around the scene of the crime and who were eye witnesses to the downing of the airplane; or of analyzing the numerous documents on file throughout the world on this sad event, to get to the truth of this terrorist act: the Committee limited itself to a mere collation of all those elements, even some already proven false, that might tend to exonerate “the post-genocide Rwandan authorities.” Such is the real mission of the Mutsinzi Committee; such is the end-purpose of its report.    more »

My Tutsi friend is in the hands of Africa’s Murder Inc.

Who will stop the criminal cartel that is currently running wild in Kigali? Who will bring an end to the grisly martyrdom of the Tutsi, Hutu and Congolese? Who will find justice for the French, Spanish and Canadians felled by the bullets and missiles of the assassins who seized state power in Rwanda by force of arms in 1994?

For the moment, all is silence. Maybe an uncomfortable silence—but silence nonetheless! Faced with the growing murderousness of the Rwandan authorities, faced with the torrent of Rwandan soldiers and diplomats fleeing into other countries, faced with ever more persecutions of political opponents, faced with arbitrary arrests of Rwandan citizens at home and abroad: the Western powers that support the Kigali regime are keeping their heads down. Yet the lives of many Rwandans, inside and outside the country, are now being threatened more than ever—regardless of whether they are Tutsi or Hutu. Not since the days of the one-party states has Africa experienced such a savage and ruthless dictatorship as the one in Kigali today. This unsustainable situation is unbearable for the victims of the Rwandan tragedy of 1994.   more »

What makes Christophe GARGOT’s 2009 documentary, “D’Arusha à Arusha,” unique is that it seems to present a very convincing, however tangential, prima facie argument for a version of History that is completely contrary to the version it is advocating. In presenting the ICTR as an independent instrument of International Justice—and a force against impunity and for the rights of victims—the film begins by telling us that of the 78 defendants tried, all have been Hutus connected to the former Habyarimana government or the Interim government that succeeded it. Then questions are raised: questions about the number and ethnic constituency of the genocide victims, questions as to the role of ethnic (tribal) conflict and the ‘Hate Speech’ it spawned, questions as to the real independence of the Tribunal, questions as to the Tribunals authority in pursuing the assassins of two African heads of state, even questions on the legal veracity of the genocide, itself—all these highly pertinent questions are posed, but none is answered to anyone’s satisfaction. Yet even a moderately informed viewer cannot help but feel the overwhelming weight of the evidence presented in this film falls on the side of the Defense—and that this Tribunal, like its Yugoslav twin in The Hague, is really a continuation of the war in Rwanda, even an extension of the Rwandan genocide, through the maintenance of a false history in the interests of Western (NATO/AFRICOM) militarism.   more »

[Any hope for the future presupposes a general refusal by the People to remain in or return to slavery.

Here are images of the People of Greece and their response to the global crisis of waste capitalism.

But in the US? Can Americans break the mystical (yet ironclad) chains of superstition and propaganda that have been cinched-down on them by their waste culture and its craven, soulless media?

The country is currently blessed with a brilliant leader who is the descendant of slaves--American wage-slaves and Kenyan colonial subjects--his image alone should be a banner under which the American People march against the criminal speculators and other waste mongers that have degraded their nation and their daily lives to the point of no longer being humanly sustainable.

Before Capitalism can be converted into some sort of rational and decent social productive order, Capital must first be challenged, then controlled by the People.

A sort of Democracy (government of, by and for the 'demos,' really more republican than democratic, founded, as it was, on a rigid hierarchical class structure with abundant access to slave labor, but . . .) was long ago born in Greece.

So watch this video from the Greek Communist Party and look to emulate the spirit of the Greek workers--if we are to have any hopes for the rebirth of a real, popular democracy. --mc]


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYjt7gvICF8   more »

Nicholas Sarkozy and Bernard Kouchner, two hope-to-die war-lovers (remember, Kouchner’s 2004 auto-bio is called ‘Les Guerriers Pour La Paix’ or ‘Warriors for Peace,’ and Sarkozy . . . is short.), have effectively completed France’s unconditional surrender to the anti-democratic (read: Fascist) aggressors in the post-Soviet wars for globalized neo-liberal Waste-Capitalism, with their mortgaging of France’s international moral stature and political influence, its hard-earn reputation as a champion of democracy and Human Rights and as a force for Reason moved by Decency, to the junk-bondage-brokers at those misery exchanges, NATO, AFRICOM, the UN, and the US State & Defense Departments, for a seat at the rigged war game of African resource roulette.

And nothing better describes the current emptiness at the moral/spiritual core of France's national identity (what I like to call its 'Empty Burkah Syndrome') than the recent arrest--and near immediate release for lack of any substantive charge, but with an ever-looming prospect of extradition to Rwanda--of Mme Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of the martyred Rwandan President, Juvénal Habyarimana, on the accusation that she conspired to murder her husband as a way to launch her 'Little House' pet-project: the liquidation of Rwanda's Tutsi minority. Even the reprehensible Phillip Gourevitch's unspeakable colon must be spasing out behind this one.   more »

Your Excellencies,

We, the undersigned detainees of the ICTR, have the honor of sending you, herewith attached, our reaction to the report by a Committee[1] established by the Rwandan government to investigate the attack on President Habyarimana’s airplane. As you will notice, we demonstrated, on the basis of evidence, the falseness of the report produced by this so-called independent Committee.

Actually, this committee of Experts, composed of eminent RPF members, was given the mission by the current President of Rwanda, General Paul Kagame, to fabricate exculpatory evidence in order to absolve him and his henchmen, who took part in the murders of the Heads of State of Rwanda and Burundi, seven of their collaborators, as well as the three French crew members of the presidential Falcon 50 airplane. This Committee was also put in place to block the international arrest warrants issued by the French Judge Jean-Louis Bruguière after his eight year inquiry into the terrorist attack of April 6 1994. In the Mutsinzi Report, we see the RPF’s final attempt completely to silence the truth of its responsibility in the Rwandan tragedy, in general, and in the assassination of President Habyarimana, in particular.    more »

Introductory Observations

The Truth is not one-sided. It is a reality made up of many aspects. One must note that the truth about the tragic events of 1994 in Rwanda is especially difficult to get the mind around. Here, nearly 16 years after they happened, and while the attack of 6 April 1994 has been universally recognized as the spark that set off the genocide, the United Nations, which was assigned to help Rwandans in the difficult search for peace, has never found it worthwhile to conduct an international investigation of this attack. After which the entire region of the African Great Lakes was turned into an enormous battlefield, where the victims are numbered in the millions.

The current document is a contribution to this search for the Truth. It is the result of the work of a collective, and only a synthesis of that group-work is presented. But this document should nonetheless allow the reader to come to a more personal understanding of the complexity of the Rwandan situation, in general, and of the intrinsic quality of the Mutsinzi Report, in particular.

If this collective endeavor is signed by only one person, that is because of concern for preserving the security of those who took part in this writing.

The different paragraphs that follow are in the order of the chapters of the Report.   more »

Following the release of the “Mutsinzi Report” on the 6 April 1994 attack which took the lives of 12 fathers from Rwanda, Burundi and France*; we, the family of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, feel an obligation to warn the public of the attempted manipulations of and diversions from the reality of this terrorist act that took our father from us. We want first of all to impeach the objectivity of this “Independent Committee of Experts,” whose use of the word ‘independent’ is a mere embellishment for its desperate need to get across. Everyone knows [or should know—cm/p] that Mr. Jean Mutsinzi, head of the Commission, is a founding member of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF, currently holding state power) and the former Chief Justice of the Rwandan Supreme Court, also under the same RPF regime. His proximity to Paul Kagame is even better known and we do not expect that this Commission he leads is going to cast any suspicion on the party of which he is a founding member or on his colleagues and comrades-in-arms, including Kagame, himself, though they have been found, by international judicial investigations, to be the instigators and commanders of this attack.

We wish to draw the public’s attention to the fact that besides the dubious independence of this Rwandan Commission, it was only conceived in April 2007 and set up by the Rwandan government in November 2007 to begin its work in December of that year, or nearly 14 years after the fact. This is incontrovertible evidence of the indifference of the Rwandan government, since the RPF came to power, on the subject of finding the truth behind this terrorist act. This indifference was even confirmed by Paul Kagame, himself, at the end of 2006 when he stated on the international airwaves (on the BBC’s Hard Talk and on RF1) that he is not at all interested in clearing up the death of President Habyarimana; he said he could not care less about it.   more »

One Response to Oliver Kamm

According to Oliver Kamm, our "Open Letter to Amnesty International's London and Belfast Offices, on the Occasion of Noam Chomsky's Belfast Festival Lecture, October 30, 2009"[1],

"blithely repeated claims that were judged to be defamatory in the High Court in 2000, when ITN successfully sued Living Marxism (LM) magazine. LM had claimed that Ed Vulliamy, along with Penny Marshall and Ian Williams of ITN, had been fraudulent in reporting the Trnopolje camp in Bosnia…."[2]

Kamm is wrong.

Nowhere in the March 2000 verdict in the libel case brought by ITN against LM for publishing Thomas Deichmann's "The Picture that Fooled the World"[3] did the jury reject the specific factual claim by Deichmann and LM that when the first encounter took place between these British reporters and Fikret Alic and the other Bosnian Muslim men on August 5, 1992, it was Marshall, Williams, and Vulliamy who were standing behind the fence through which the interviews were carried out and the film taken. As Deichmann argued, this part chicken-wire, part barbed-wire fence surrounded an agriculture-related compound at a much larger site that included a public school and a community center, but was then serving as a camp for displaced persons and detainees during the civil wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In the center of this compound stood a barn, the fence having been erected prior to the civil wars to enclose the barn and objects related to it. But this fence did not surround or enclose the Bosnian Muslim men standing on the opposite side of it from the British reporters, outside the immediate compound in which the British reporters stood.
   more »

On reading parts of the Mutsinzi Report without any historical analysis, the uninformed might find themselves as overwhelmingly convinced as they were with the sensational Jean de Dieu Mucyo Report on France’s involvement in the Rwandan Tutsi genocide of 1994. But readers who are familiar with the methods and strategies of the RPF, especially those used by the commissions created by the current Kigali regime, will notice right away that the Mutsinzi Report is batched testimony that was either made-to-orders or scripted and given to ‘rehearsed witnesses’ to present, a potpourri of tricked-out situations and information and of documents interpreted in such a way as to turn them into disinformation for manipulating public opinion. In short, the Report of the Mutsinzi Commission is a diversion!

My focus will be partly on the Commission, itself, and partly on extracts from certain testimony and documents.


The Mutsinzi Commission:

Continental Magazine presents The Mutsinzi Commission as an ‘Independent Committee of Experts’ presided over by Jean Mutsinzi, Chief Justice of the African Court of Human Rights and Peoples and the former Chief Justice of the Rwandan Supreme Court. This Committee, composed of members of the RPF, cannot be considered independent, impartial or even credible, since it was created by the RPF, which is a party to the matter that the Commission is charged with investigating. Furthermore, the appointment of an international functionary to head this Commission smacks of chicanery. Since Mutsinzi is Rwandan, the Rwandan government should not have assigned him a mission that conflicts with his functions with the Commission of the African Union. This was done to project greater credibility onto the Report. The Commission is not independent because it answers to the Rwandan government and cannot report its findings to the public, something it has twice tried to do and has twice been thwarted by the Rwandan government. The Commission cannot deliver its findings or judgments, but must convey only the views of the RPF.   more »

The public should be aware of the facts before forming and expressing an opinion. The fact is that Rwanda before 1990 was considered the Switzerland of Africa, a model of social development. The result of the 1959 social revolution that threw off the Tutsi monarchy and aristocracy and freed the majority Hutu population from serfdom and a lifetime of humiliation was the establishment of a collective society in which both the Hutu and Tutsi, as well as the Twa, lived together in relative harmony. Tutsis were members of the government, its administration, were present in large numbers in the education system and the judiciary, and controlled most of the large private commercial companies in Rwanda. The Rwandan army was a multiethnic military force composed of both Hutus and Tutsis, and it stayed a multiethnic force even when the Rwandan Army was forced to retreat into the Congo forests in July 1994 because of shortages of ammunition brought about by the western embargo on arms and supplies.

Rwanda descended into chaos in 1990 when the self-described Rwanda Patriotic Front, or RPF, forces launched a surprise attack on October 1, 1990, from Uganda. In fact, every one of the officers and men of that invasion force were members of the Ugandan Army.

The ‘RPF rebel’ invasion was really an invasion by Uganda disguised as an independent “liberation force.” Liberation from what has never been stated. Initially, the justification put out by the RPF was the right of return of Tutsi “refugees” from Uganda to Rwanda. However, the refugee problem had been resolved by an agreement between the RPF, Uganda, Rwanda, the UNHCR, and the OAU, a few weeks earlier, in which the Rwandan government agreed to the repatriation of all those Tutsis in Uganda who wanted to return to Rwanda. That accord required that Tutsi representatives of the refugees travel to Kigali for a meeting to determine the mechanics of that population movement, and how to accommodate all those people in such a small country. They were expected at the end of September 1990. They never arrived.    more »

First of all, I reiterate my remarks about the alleged massacre at Srebrenica. President Milosevic and others at the Hague tribunal knocked down that American-KLA canard a long time ago. That you keep repeating US-KLA propaganda only shows that you have no interest in the facts or the evidence. As for my representation of President Milosevic, yes, it was an honor to represent such a brave and principled man whose only crime was to continue to fight for socialism against the fascism of the US and its axis. He was completely innocent of those fabricated charges, as was stated in the report I made at the request of the American Association of Jurists after his initial arrest in Belgrade by the DOS regime. In an interview with the Deputy Minister of Justice and the investigating judge, I asked if there was any substance to the charges and they told me, no, it was fabricated, but they were forced to do so as the Americans wanted his head. They told me that if they had refused to charge him, the Americans threatened to resume the bombing of Belgrade. . . .

This is all evidence presented before the trial chamber at the ICTR. I can send you the transcripts if you are interested. One other thing your readers should be told regarding the alleged genocide: The Rwandan Army was a multiethnic force that included in its ranks many Tutsi officers and men. Everyone of them stayed with the army and fought the RPF, and when the Rwandan Army retreated into the Congo, these Tutsi soldiers stayed with the army rather than join the RPF. How on earth can anyone claim that an army partly composed of Tutsis could engage in a genocide of their own people? It’s absurd. . . .   more »

In an editorial published back east in August 1997 I urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to resign. I opposed the expansion of settlements in Israeli-occupied areas of Palestine and called for an immediate and permanent cessation to the expropriation of Arab lands, a practice still regarded around the world as a blatant provocation and an open invitation to unrest and violence.

I further argued that dastardly alliances with jingoist generals, unholy covenants with religious zealots in Brooklyn and in Jerusalem who use ideological extortion to force a theocracy on a largely secular society; the inexplicable compulsion to scuttle peace negotiations, a wrathful disdain toward international censure, a savage antipathy toward the Palestinian people -- all hallmarks of an administration oscillating between clumsiness and aberration – posed grave dangers to peace in the Middle East.

In short, Mr. Netanyahu’s regime, I said, was a calamity and a recipe for disaster.   more »

Just as with anything like a real investigation of 9/11, we're still waiting for the RPF's explanation of what really happened on 4/6. While we were waiting, Kagame and Rwanda have been lavished with an endless array of Humanitarian/Capitalist awards: from Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential list, to a Man of Peace prize from the sectarian pervert Rick Warren of the Saddleback Congregation, to a Global Achievement award from the secular war criminal Bill Clinton; concurrent with the renewal of French/Rwandan diplomatic relations, formerly-Francophone Rwanda was accepted into the British Commonwealth; and, my all time fave of a Rwandan parable because it really tells the story of how fucked up are today's geopolitical values:

--The UNICEF country chief, Joseph Foumbi, has congratulated [the Kigali] government for being the first country in the world to be declared landmine free. Rwanda was declared land mine free last week by the Cartagena Summit on a Mine-Free World in Colombia.--

Of course, all those mines were laid, in the first place, by the current Rwandan government after they invaded from Uganda in October 1990. But is even this joke going to be enough to quiet the questions on 4/6?   more »

David Rohde on Uncovering 7,000 Executed Muslims—Well, One Bone, At Least

The trial of the former Bosnian Serb wartime President Radovan Karadzic that began on October 26, 2009, has unleashed a new wave of propaganda on the alleged Serbian genocide at Srebrenica. This has provided a model case study of focused propaganda that serves Western imperial interests, but which fully captured the liberal and left intellectuals and media. This is one of those cases where closure came early, with highly effective demonization of the Serbs, treatment of the Yugoslav Tribunal as a genuine instrument of justice rather than a NATO-war tool (which it is), and a liberal-left collapse.   more »

Prior to the first Rwandan invasion of Zaire/DRC in 1996, a phalanx of U.S. intelligence operatives converged on Zaire. Their actions suggested a strong interest in Zaire’s eastern defenses. The number-two person at the U.S. Embassy in Kigali travelled from Kigali to eastern Zaire to initiate intelligence contacts with the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo-Zaire (AFDL-CZ) rebels under the command of the late President Laurent Kabila. The Rwandan embassy official met with rebel leaders at least twelve times.[2]



A former U.S. ambassador to Uganda - acting on behalf of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – gathered intelligence on the movement of Hutu refugees through eastern Zaire. The DIA’s second ranking Africa hand, who also served as the U.S. military attaché in Kigali, reconnoitered the Rwandan border towns of Cyangugu and Gisenyi, gathering intelligence on the cross border movements of anti-Mobutu Rwandan Tutsis from Rwanda.[3]



The Defense Intelligence Agency’s African bureau chief established a close personal relationship with Bizima (alias Bizimana) Karaha, an ethnic Rwandan who would later become the Foreign Minister in the Laurent Kabila government. Moreover, the DIA’s Africa division had close ties with Military Professional Resources, Inc. (MPRI), an Alexandria, Virginia, private military company (PMC), whose Vice President for Operations is a former Director of DIA.
   more »

Two of the highlights of this weekend's Conference of ICTR Defense attorneys in The Hague were the French investigative writer, Pierre Péan, author of the magnificent history of the Rwandan counter-revolution (1990-1994), "Noires fureurs, blancs menteurs," and the Tutsi Prince, Antoine Nyetera, the source of Péan's controversial four-page aria on the Rwandan (Tutsi) culture of the lie (known in Kinyarwanda as ubwenge) at the very beginning (pp 41-44) of his 500+page tome.  One or the other or both of them smartly pointed out that the 'culture of the lie' is characteristic to all irrational, anti-democratic, neofeudal, monarchic, minoritarian--in a word, Fascist--political cultures.  The ruling ...   more »

Lugan, like so many ‘experts’ seems pretty careless about what he knows and what he thinks we know. He gets names wrong (he has ‘Harbour’ for ‘Arbour’)--or maybe he’s just being anecdotal here, sketchy--but, hey, I don’t wanna nit-pick, piss off another ‘expert’--so let me just fill in a few spaces he left when it came to The General’s case--that’s General Augustin Ndindiliyimana, Chief of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie during the troubles, whose back we’ve had here at CM/P for some time now.

Sure, the Tribs are all about false witnesses giving scripted and rehearsed testimony as part of some plea deal with the DAs in Arusha or Kigali--and the rules of evidence and procedure (like the bad Joint Criminal Enterprise joke) are pretty much cooked down to allow the Prosecutor, who is indistinguishable from the Court, which is indistinguishable from NATO (which is indistinguishable from al Qaeda), to have it his way without breaking a sweat. But to be complicit in this shit, to dignify this grotesquery with your participation, is not without lethal side effects--Milosevic turned out so many prosecution witnesses in his court that Judge Richard May got brain cancer and died. So to see all these Canadian shysters in Arusha actually organize to fight against the essential injustice at the stinking heart of International Justice is a singularly gratifying surprise.   more »

Killings by the Tutsi

But there is another side to the story. Lemarchand talks of the studied disregard of the narratives of the Hutu refugees about the massive persecution and killings inflicted on Hutus by the RPF, "all of these add up to a devastating commentary on the conspiracy of silence surrounding one of the biggest ethnic cleansing operations that followed in the wake of the genocide" (p. 11)[1]. So, briefly, the RPF, closely associated with Museveni's regime in Uganda (having helped him to overthrow Obote's government), planned to capture Rwanda, assisted by Uganda. President Habyarimana's regime in Rwanda was somewhat shaky and was forced into a process of democratisation[2]. Among its new policies was the repatriation of the Rwandese refugees in Uganda, set for November 1990. Gérard Prunier, the distinguished historian of the Great Lakes Region, writes, "this new development augured ill for the RPF militants who were now in danger of losing their support among the refugees if the latter felt that their return to Rwanda could be achieved without fighting. Accordingly, they accelerated their preparations to beat the November deadline"[3]. Prunier says that the RPF was goaded into action for another reason: intellectual circles in Rwanda were busy preparing to launch political parties, as Habyarimana, now under pressure also from the French, "could not long delay the acceptance of a multiparty system— which would deprive the RPF of one its best public relations points, i.e., that it was fighting a totalitarian single-party dictatorship." (p. 91).    more »

Israeli capitalists have long been keen on exploiting Africa's mineral wealth. They have a high interest in African diamonds and process them in Israel, which is already the world's second largest processor of diamonds. Israel is also interested in African uranium, thorium and other radioactive elements used to manufacture nuclear fuel. Many retired army officers are on the lookout for job opportunities as trainers of African militias.

Israeli concerns with Iran also feature high on the agenda of the Zionist state. Israel has been keeping a close eye on the Iranian drive in Africa, where Tehran, following in Beijing's footsteps, has become involved in a number of major economic projects using very cheap African workers. The Israeli ruling class is very wary of Tehran's ambitions in a continent so rich in the raw materials for producing nuclear fuel. It hopes to forge a network of strategic relations in order to check the expansion of Iranian influence in Africa. Israel also wants to remove the influence of the Lebanese communities in West Africa, whom Israel suspects of helping Hezbollah. Working to its advantage are its close ties with Washington.   more »

[This is a Press Release (a French version follows the English) from the Forces for the Democratic Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) condemning the recent crimes against Rwandan refugees in eastern Congo committed by the combined militaries of the Democratic Republic of Congo (FADRC) and the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), known as the Rwandan Patriotic Army or Rwandan Defense Forces (RPA/RDF)--the latter being the powerful armed forces built-up in the 1980s and 90s in Rwanda/Burundi/Uganda at great expense by the US (AFRICOM), the UK and Israel, to further the militarized wastage of the African continent while facilitating the theft of its vast natural resources by private Western multinational corporations. Much of the social and political chaos one sees in sub-Saharan Africa is instigated by off-the-books military units with roots in the several major US bases in Rwanda/Burundi. And, of course, when it occurs in eastern Congo, this deadly chaos (which has taken upward of 6 million lives since 1990) is blamed on its victims, the FDLR. --mc]   more »

In mid-July, the NY Times reported that the Obama administration had selected Stephen Rapp to replace Pierre Prosper, the Bush administration’s Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes. A former Iowa U.S. Attorney, and Democrat politico, Rapp began his international career at the UN Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2001, while Carla Del Ponte was Chief Prosecutor. In Del Ponte’s 2008 memoir, Madam Prosecutor: Confronting Humanity’s Worst Criminals and the Culture of Impunity, translated into English in early 2009, Del Ponte explains how she was removed from her ICTR position in 2003 by U.S. Ambassador Prosper, himself, because she refused to cooperate with a U.S.-initiated “cover-up” of war crimes committed by the current Rwandan government during the 1994 “Rwandan Genocide.”

According to Del Ponte, the ICTR Prosecutor had the evidence long before 2003 to prosecute Kagame for “touching-off” the Rwanda Genocide by ordering the assassination of Rwanda’s sitting President Juvenal Habyarimana. Her book also details dozens of massacre sites involving thousands of victims for which the Kagame government and military should be prosecuted. The well-publicized canard, that “the identity of the assassins is unknown” is a bald-faced lie, known to all ICTR senior prosecutors, according to Ms. Del Ponte.   more »

Here is where your crimes become 'unspeakable.' Because your idea of regime change in Serbia went well-beyond the man, Milosevic, who, after all, was just that, one man, a man who had served his country lawfully, loyally and in the best traditions of revolutionary socialism. He could not be allowed to continue in Serbian/Yugoslav politics, especially as leader of the opposition, because that would have validated that country's socialist democracy, and it was that absolute need to destroy socialist democracy everywhere, that forced you not only to 'bring down' the politician Milosevic, along with his Socialist Party of Serbia (as your ilk has subsequently done with Vojslav Seselj and his Radical Party of Serbia), but you had, in the great tradition of non-violence, to put this decent, majoritarian leader to death.   more »

There are many problems with the Campaign for Peace and Democracy's "Question & Answer on the Iran Crisis," issued by the CPD on July 7, and widely circulated since then.[1] 

The CPD adopted this format, it tells us, because "some on the left, and others as well, have questioned the legitimacy of and the need for solidarity with the anti-Ahmadinejad movement," and the CPD believes "those questions need to be squarely addressed." 

We believe, on the contrary, that the CPD's 13 questions-and-answers do little to clarify issues related to Iran's June 12 presidential election and its tumultuous aftermath, and even less to help leftists and "American progressives" decide how they should respond to them. 

As we try to show below, when stripped of its didactic format, this Q&A amounts to little more than an emotional plea to its target audience to surrender what remains of their leftist instincts (long under siege in the States, and shrinking rapidly), and join its authors[2] for a ride on the "green wave" of yet another color-coded campaign that fits well with one of their government's longest-running programs of destabilization and regime-change. We believe that any "confusion" felt by the left and "American progressives" towards these events is a confusion that has been sown by our would-be instructors.[3]    more »

Deep Delusions, Bitter Truth
(The Trial of a Rwandan General)

[A Courtroom Drama in Two Acts]

[COMPILED BY CM/P FROM THE ACTUAL TRIAL TRANSCRIPTS OF 24 & 25 JUNE, 2009]

THE SET: The stage is empty but for a small table with a lectern on it around CS. On the Cyclorama is a large ‘Big Brother’ screen on which are projected images, still and moving pictures, appropriate to what is being said on stage.

*********

MR Black:
Why do you--so why does the Prosecution mislead--try to mislead the Court in this argument? Why? Because they are protecting the RPF, and if they don't put out this false story, then the context in which they accuse these men here doesn't make any sense. Because if the world knew that there was not just an explosion on April 6th, there was an ongoing war for four years in which the RPF assassinated people, committed acts of terrorism every day, created millions of refugees and murdered tens and tens of thousands of people, all mainly Hutus, but their attitude is that the only good Hutu is a dead Hutu. That's obviously their attitude.   more »