Book Review: What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage
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| Norman Finkelstein’s What Gandhi Says
About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage OR Books, 2012, 100 pages |
Norman Finkelstein was an assistant professor of Political Science at DePaul University, but because he exposed influential persons as frauds—such as the famous lawyer from the OJ Simpson trial and notable apologist for the state of Israel, Alan Dershowitz—he was denied full tenure in 2007.
I first learned of Mr. Finkelstein in the aftermath of the September 11th terrorist attacks. In May of 2002 I happened to catch Professor Noam Chomsky on CNN. Later that day I went out and bought his book 9-11. After quickly devouring the pamphlet-sized book I moved on to numerous others titles, including Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky. In the book is a chapter titled “The Fate of an Honest Intellectual,” in which Chomsky predicts Finkelstein’s fate: “I warned him, if you follow this, you’re going to get in trouble—because you’re going to expose the American intellectual community as a gang of frauds, and they are not going to like it, and they’re going to destroy you.”
In a recent interview with Tablet Magazine, a Jewish online daily, Finkelstein points out that:
I’ve been out of DePaul, it’s going on five years, right? There are a lot of academics who are politically sympathetic to me. Palestine’s not an unpopular cause anymore in academia. OK, so let’s ask the question: Has any professor worked to get me a job at any university? I want to be factual. Answer: No.
Has any professor worked to get me a guest lectureship for a year? Answer: No.
Has any professor worked to get me a lecture, even once? Answer: No.
It seems Chomsky was right.
But what Finkelstein’s career says about his moral character is also on display in his latest book, What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage, recently published by OR Books.
Motivated by the Israel-Palestine conflict, Finkelstein began scrutinizing the one hundred volume set of Gandhi’s collected works for useful information. Finkelstein finds a man beset by seeming contradictions, who (in classic Finkelstein form) made “Olympian pronouncements and saccharine bromides such as nonviolence, buoyed by the intervention of God, being the most potent force in the world,” and who Finkelstein says “might fairly be said” to have “fostered a death cult” with his numerous appeals to others to lay down their lives for their causes. At the core Gandhi is a flawed man with valuable political instincts, and is dedicated to the principles of nonviolence resistance.
Through his exhaustive research, Finkelstein uncovers a man who saw nonviolence and resistance as inseparably intertwined. One uses nonviolence to resist oppression and injustice, not to be passive or apathetic. Nonviolence itself is a weapon of force, “the most potent force in the world,” as Gandhi proclaimed. And it takes more courage to fight with nonviolence than violence. To Gandhi, using nonviolence so as to run away from danger is “cowardice” and is more contemptible than using violence.
Though What Gandhi Says is partly biographical, the book’s main purpose is to have modern activists and organizers think more deeply and seriously about what nonviolence, resistance and courage mean. Indeed, the book is dedicated to the Occupy movement. As Finklestein writes, “The target audience of Gandhi’s campaigns was not the implacable opponents of reform but the actual potential supporters of it, whom he wanted to goad into action.”
Here a recent example of a campaign targeting an audience of “potential supporters” (not mentioned in Finkelstein’s book) is worth mentioning. In Troy, Michigan a local library was facing cuts due to budge woes. The local government proposed a 0.7% tax increase to keep the libraries adequately funded and staffed. Local Tea Party people hijacked the narrative and droned on about “taxes.” Rather than discussing the value of the libray and books to the community, discussion was centering around taxes, taxes, taxes. It was looking like the tax wouldn’t pass and the community would suffer for it. Then the library started a counter-campaign where they pretended to be a book burning party opposed to the tax increase. The tactic got people upset at the prospect of setting fire to books, which people love, and they were “goad[ed] into action.” The vote had a record turnout and the tax passed in a landslide.
While Norman writes in the introduction that he started his research on Gandhi “in order to think though a nonviolent strategy for ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands” he goes on to say that “the field for the application of Gandhi’s ideas has now been vastly expanded by the emergence of the Arab Spring and nonviolence resistance movements around the world.” Which we can see happening now where a very Gandhiesque hunger strike has swept through Palestine. The most recent case being that of Palestinian soccer player Mahmoud Sarsak, who was held without charge and just recently announced the end of his fast in light of Israeli authorities vowing to give him an early release.
Finkelstein has clearly been affected by the research that went into his writing of this book. It seems to center around a lesson Gandhi taught him. In What Gandhi Says, Finkelstein writes:
Were the “pro-life” half of the American population to converge on abortion clinics and pledge a collective fast unto the death until and unless the clinics ceased performing abortions, the “pro-choice” half would almost certainly not be converted by such a spectacle.
In other words, it is not suffering alone that touches but suffering in the pursuit of a legitimate goal. The public’s recognition of the legitimacy of such a goal presumes, however, a preexisting broad consensus, if only latent or incipient, according to which the victims justly deserve what they seek.
This passage underlines a big chunk of Finkelstein’s strained relationship with the BDS movement. Finkelstein argues that the movement needs to be clear and honest about its position on Israel, and whether or not they recognize the state’s right to exist in the pre-June 1967 borders. Failure to be clear on this is deceptive at best. And if BDS were to come out and say it does not accept or recognize such a right then, as Finkelstein put it in his recent debate with Phil Weiss at Mondoweiss: “how does it help to advocate political solutions that have zero traction, and zero possibility of gaining traction, among Americans, who will never support a settlement that—whatever euphemism you use and however you articulate it—entails Israel’s disappearance?”
Thus the need to temper our campaigns to what Finkelstein calls the “practical-political, not abstract-moral.” If social movements are to succeed there will have to be considerable more growth, and more people brought into the fold. This does not mean compromising principles, but recognizing we can only go so far at a particular moment. We might be for some anarchist utopian society in the “abstract.” But campaigns that are more likely to succeed are for living wages, tax justice, a serious jobs bill, and so on. And speaking tactically it makes sense to organize around those issues where a larger part of the population can be politicized and mobilized into action.
In his conclusion Finkelstein writes that, “If a criticism is to be leveled against Gandhi’s nonviolence, it is that he sets the bar of courage too high for most mortals to vault.” For Gandhi, we need to be willing to sacrifice not just our relationships with friends and families, or even a bit of jail time, but our lives. Who is willing to lay down their life to stop tyranny or an injustice without using force? This, according to Gandhi, is the ultimate test of courage.
We see this test frequently in books and movies. The hero lets someone put a gun or sword to their head or throat and uses their permission of death to not only startle the nerves of the belligerent and break their will, but assuming they do find death, arouse the public into action—so the principle is not alien to us. At the end of the 1998 Pixar film A Bug’s Life, the main hero, an ant named Flik, forfeits his life to stop the bad guys, a gang of grasshoppers who exploit and rob them each harvest season. Flik’s pending death is meant to set an example for the other ants to show courage, which it eventually does as the ants organize and defeat the grasshoppers, saving Flik.
And you can see why Finkelstein would dedicate the book to Occupy. Here in the belly of the Beast it is of the utmost importance that American activists learn to be as politically savvy as Gandhi was, and to pick and choose not only their battles, but their strategies and tactics as well. While “the challenge for the younger generation as it embarks on the struggle to remake the world is to see how far it can advance without having to use violence,” before we can answer that we need to know who is Occupy’s “target audience” (we already know: the so-called “99 percent”), and how does it plan to “goad [them] into action”? The latter part of that question is where you will find value in Norman Finkelstein’s book, What Gandhi Says About Nonviolence, Resistance and Courage.
The ‘Parallels Between Syria and Balkans’ NYT Does Not See
On June 11, 2012 the New York Times published a piece by their journalist Paul Geitner titled “NATO Chief Sees Parallels Between Syria and Balkans,” and true to form for the “paper of record” the piece is missing such an alarming amount of context and information that what is presented is highly misleading propaganda in service to the American Empire.
The secretary general of the NATO alliance, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said on Monday that the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s illustrated what might befall Syria unless Russia and the West agreed on a “unified, clear message” to the Syrian government to stop the violence.
It’s not that there are not parallels between the two conflicts—there is—but that the parallels worth drawing are not even raised. The parallel raised by Rasmussen is the propaganda narrative that suits Western interests. It’s on “the Syrian government to stop the violence,” who is presented as the main threat, and not that of the Western-backed armed gangs, which are being used to destabilize and ultimately overthrow the government and replace it with a compliant regime (or at least have one less obstacle in its way of controlling the oil-rich region). Much like it was on the Serbian governments to “stop the violence,” and not armed gangs like the Kurdish Liberation Army (KLA).
Another interesting parallel is the involvement of al Qaeda, and being on the side of the U.S. While it is perhaps more common to know that the Islamic terrorist organization is fighting alongside rebels in Syria, and killing dozens of civilians, many may not remember that this is a lot like what happened in the Balkans as well.
As early as 1992 the U.S. was made aware of a growing al Qaeda presence in the Balkans to fight alongside the U.S.-backed KLA. What was not known by those supplying Washington with evidence was that Washington was fully aware and arming the KLA:
Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around 6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.
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By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department’s terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.
Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a “jihad” in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with “freedom fighter” Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America’s special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.
Even The National Post covered it in the aftermath of September 11th terrorist attacks when they reported that,
Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network has been active in the Balkans for years, most recently helping Kosovo rebel’s battle for independence from Serbia with the financial and military backing of the United States and NATO.
Antiwar.com‘s Christopher Deliso also wrote of NATO’s involvement in the Balkans:
Last Summer, rumors of an unstated connection between NATO and the NLA persisted in Macedonia. Two occasions in particular drew attention. First, the Battle of Aracinovo, in which German and Macedonian sources alleged that 17 ‘advisors’ from MPRI took part on the Albanian side; Macedonian security sources claim that three Americans were among those killed. Second, was a mysterious airdrop by a US helicopter over the NLA stronghold of Sipkovice, filmed by a Macedonian television crew. They claimed that a ‘container,’ perhaps of weapons, was being given to the Albanians, for use against the Macedonian security forces.
In his article “America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims,” the Guardian UK’s Richard J Aldrich wrote of
a vast secret conduit of weapons smuggling through Croatia. This was arranged by the clandestine agencies of the US, Turkey and Iran, together with a range of radical Islamist groups, including Afghan mojahedin and the pro-Iranian Hizbullah.
While on trial at The Hague, former Serbian and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević blamed the violence on “terrorists,” much like Syria’s president does today. And when drilled by the presiding judge Milošević produced what was said to be a FBI document showing the support to the “terrorists”:
Presiding Judge Richard May asked Milosevic where he was getting his information and the defendant waved a document he said was produced by the FBI last December documenting al-Qaeda and mujahedin activity in Kosovo.
The document was entered into evidence but no details were discussed.
Considering how the Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails written in December of 2011 show that “SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces,” the parallels are even more significant. And while the U.S. “distanced themselves” from a bombing campaign because “Syrian air defenses are a lot more robust and are much denser, esp around Damascus and on the borders with Israel” it was noted that the plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within.” Though, again, the Times’ Gietner has nothing to say about this.
Wikileaks has already shown that the U.S. has been supporting the opposition forces in Syria since before Obama took office, and the U.S. has only been pushing for “the Syrian government to stop the violence” while ignoring the violence and war crimes of the opposition forces.
This makes Rasmussen’s comment that, “If we are to facilitate a peaceful solution in Syria I think it’s of utmost importance that the international community stands united and sends a unified, clear message to the Assad regime that it must live up to its international obligations and stop the crackdowns on the civilian population, and accommodate the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people,” all the more empty and cynical. Talking about the desire for a peaceful solution—while knowing full well that the U.S. is implementing a plan of supporting armed gangs “to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within,” and saying nothing about how if we are serious about peace that ending such a program is an absolute necessity—is a bunch of hot air.
One last unmentioned parallel worth noting is how the West exploits the victimization of the Syrian people (while simultaneously attacking them via armed gangs they support) in order to facilitate its imperial adventures. This too was true for NATO’s intervention in the Balkans, where the plight of Kosovar Albanians received considerable coverage and concern yet the welfare of hundreds of thousands of Serbians who were ethncially cleansed in Croatia (e.g. Operation Storm) didn’t receive comparable attention or care. But as admitted in his eyewitness account Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo , John Norris—a senior Clinton official who was party to the tripartite negotiations led by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott—wrote that, “It was Yugoslavia’s resistance to the broader trends of political and economic reform—not the plight of Kosovar Albanians—that best explains NATO’s war.”
Like the Balkans, the West is implementing its special brand of humanitarian imperialism in Syria. It looks for any claim, whether true or not, to demonize the insubordinate Syrian regime so that it can justify its programs of destabilization and regime change. At the same time Western leaders and officials are not only quiet on the crimes of those armed elements it backs, but have the audacity to cry crocodile tears over the welfare of others. The faux-appeal to human rights and “peaceful solutions,” a common choice of rhetoric among tyrants, gets no rebuke from the Free Press. It’s hard to imagine Geitner and the New York Times do not get this. The much more likely explanation is pretty well established by now: the Times is a propaganda outlet spreading disinformation to the public.
NYT says Charles Taylor Conviction is ‘a watershed case for modern human rights law’
Charles Taylor in court at his war crimes trial in The Hague. Photograph: Reuters
On the front page of today’s New York Times is a story about how former Liberian President Charles Taylor was sentenced to 50 years of prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity which he committed in the Sierra Leone civil war that lasted from 1991-2002, and which resulted in the deaths of around 50,000 people.
The article, “Ex-Liberian Leader Gets 50 Years for War Crimes,” written by Marlise Simons and J. David Goodman, says the conviction was “a watershed case for modern human rights law,” and that “Mr. Taylor was the first former head of state convicted by an international tribunal since the Nuremberg trials in Germany after World War II.”
The article even quotes a Sierra Leone politician, Ibrahim Sorie, who was present at the sentencing, as saying, “It restores our faith in the rule of law, and we see that impunity is ending for top people.”
Of course, there are plenty of reasons to not have “faith in the rule of law,” or to believe “that impunity is ending for top people.” Because all you have to do is look and see if criminal leaders from other sides of the Sierra Leone conflict are being held accountable. Sort of, but not really. Those who the West backed, like the government forces, were never indicted or tried, even though they too committed serious crimes.
Furthermore, the trial revealed that, starting in the 1980s, Charles Taylor worked for the CIA. This gets confirmed by the U.S. when, in the trials proceedings, Taylor tells his life story. He talked about how he fled to the U.S. in the mid-1980s, and how the CIA helped him break out of jail, where he then went back to Liberia to start a war. Simons’ and Goodman’s article make no mention of this fact—even though Simons reported on this in 2009. So while Taylor was busy starting a much deadlier war in Liberia, which killed around 200,000 people, those crimes were never prosecuted.
This is much like Saddam Hussein. A former ally of the United States, he is supported through the worst of his crimes. When he attacked Iran in 1980, the U.S. provided military and political support. But when his usefulness was worn out, he quickly became the epitome of evil and had to be brought to justice. And much like Taylor, Saddam’s trial was carefully crafted to avoid embarrassments. A memo to former Iraqi Prime Minister al-Jafari which was published in Foreign Policy magazine in July of 2005 states, “The special tribunal is full of legal holes and is tainted by American influence,” and that,
Erase the American Footprint: There is no denying that the IST is an American creation. The now defunct Coalition Provisional Authority established the tribunal in consultation with the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council. Its statute allows the appointment of foreign judges to the tribunal and mandates the presence of international observers. No foreign judges have yet been appointed, but the possibility is being seriously considered. The possibility itself is an insult to Iraqis. Even in Europe, which is increasingly bound together legally and culturally, it would be unacceptable to have, for example, a French judge on the bench for a German criminal trial.
The tribunals statute was drafted in English and modeled on the American adversarial legal system. The U.S. government provided $75 million and dispatched teams of prosecutors and investigators to help the tribunal prepare for the trials of senior regime officials. These American officials are dedicated, but they know little about Iraqs legal traditions. The tribunals provenance and the presence of American personnel have fostered the view that it serves U.S. rather than Iraqi interests.
And even if you go back to Times articles about the Liberian civil war at the time you see a differential treatment towards Taylor. When he was still a CIA asset.
In the article “Strategic Interests Tie U.S. to Liberia,” which was published on June 13, 1990, the NYT notes that, “even as American officials privately voice criticism of the nation’s embattled President [Doe],” Washington was finding it difficult to cut ties because “strategic interests tie Washington to the Liberian crisis” in the form of “landing and refueling rights for military aircraft and ships on 24-hour notice, the only nation in sub-Saharan Africa that accords Washington such rights,” as well as “a navigational station that emits low-frequency signals that guide ships and aircraft in the Atlantic.”
On one hand the U.S. is backing both sides of the conflict. President Doe was provided “$500 million worth of military and economic aid between 1980 and 1985,” but the relationship was becoming strained. So as rebel forces led by Taylor make ground we begin to see attitudes quickly change at the “paper of record.”
In “Rebel Forces in Liberia Surround the Capital and Begin an Attack,” which was published on July 3, 1990, it is reported that, “Mr. Taylor, who has accused General Doe’s Government of brutality and large-scale corruption, has promised a thorough political house-cleaning but has equivocated about his intention to hold national elections.”
For Washington insiders this is music to their ears. Again, a CIA asset is deriding the government of “brutality and large-scale corruption” while promising “to hold national elections” if only he can get in power.
Then on August 21 of the same year the Times publishes the article “Some Liberians Accuse the U.S. of Betrayal,” which notes that the Bush administration “has made clear it will not intervene militarily to end the civil war” even while “daily fighting between the factions led by Mr. Taylor and by Prince Johnson and the forces loyal to President Doe has resulted in massacres of thousands of civilians.”
It is not until Charles Taylor gets on the wrong side of conflicts that he becomes a criminal who must be brought to justice. When Taylor’s forces go to Sierra Leone and fight against the Western-backed government it is much like Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. A line was crossed. Now that Taylor is our enemy Simons and Goodman inform us about “a secret bonding ritual in Liberia during which [an aide who testified to the court that] he and others joined Mr. Taylor in eating a human heart.”
The differential treatment also shows in the trial of Taylor, who got a fifty-year sentence. While Simons and Goodman report that “the tribunal is to be shut down,” it’s worth noting that not one government official was indicted or tried, despite the fact that a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created before the the Special Court for Sierra Leone was set up, and in their findings they note that, “All factions specifically targeted civilians.” It wasn’t just those who weren’t on the West’s side, like Charles Taylor. Even the Western-backed government forces were found to be “responsible for systematically plundering and looting” and “for either authorising or instigating human rights violations against civilians.”
This is the “watershed case for modern human rights law” which is supposed to have restored “our faith in the rule of law,” and where “we see that impunity is ending for top people”: only those not allied with the West are tried. This is not an exception. This is the norm. To date, not one ally of the U.S. has been indicted at the ICC. Not one. And certainly not leaders from the U.S. itself.
NYT calls Rwanda’s Paul Kagame ‘Darling Dictator of the Day’
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| Most opposition political parties were barred from registering for Rwanda’s 2010 presidential election, in which Paul Kagame won 93 percent of the vote. Photo: Finbarr O’Reilly/Reuters |
That the New York Times published an op-ed by Marc Sommers calling Rwanda’s Paul Kagame “The Darling Dictator of the Day” is significant. As is the comment that “he does not merit his reputation as a visionary modernizer” because, “The reason is simple: his state is all about force.”
Sommers, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, wastes no time in pointing out that, “There’s no question who’s in charge in Rwanda.” Sommers stresses that, “The government’s commanding presence in Rwandan lives is aggressively maintained by Kagame and a clique of other former Tutsi refugees from Uganda.” He even notes that, Kagame’s government asserted its power in the run-up to the 2010 presidential elections, when authorities barred most opposition political parties from registering for elections, closed down many independent newspapers, and witnessed the flight into exile of several prominent government officials who said they “feared for their lives.”
There were also three suspicious pre-election shootings. One of the exiled officials, Kagame’s former chief of staff, Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa, was shot in the stomach in South Africa after openly criticizing the Rwandan government. A Rwandan journalist, Jean Léonard Rugambage, was killed shortly after his article, which pointed to government complicity, was published. The deputy leader of the Green Party, which was among those unable to register, was found not only dead but with his head partly severed.
Probably most important is the comment that, “Soon after the election [where “Kagame garnered 93 percent of the vote”], an exhaustively researched United Nations ‘mapping exercise’ report led the veteran Rwanda expert Filip Reyntjens to state that ‘there is overwhelming evidence of responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity’ against Kagame. A foreign expert (who asked not to be named) also reported the disappearance of ‘a large number’ of Rwandan civil society members in 2007.” That the Times published a piece which referenced not only the UN mapping report and Kagame’s complicity is significant. The conflicts in Democratic Republic of Congo, which have been steadily going on for nearly twenty years, have been the most bloody since World War Two—with around ten million killed. Noting Kagame’s “overwhelming evidence of responsibility” is an important fact to publish.
This could well signal the end of Paul Kagame’s love affair with America. Like Saddam Hussen, Suharto, Mobutu Sese Seko, and other dictators who lost favor with the American Empire, the media did not begin to acknowledge the skeletons in their closets until after they had become the boogeyman—which was often long after the worst of their crimes and human rights abuses had been committed, and which often had Western complicity in their tyranny sanitized from the record.
Thus, it was common to condemn former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein for “gassing his own people,” but references to how the U.S. government supplied the dictator with chemical weapons, or initially blamed Iran for the Halabja massacre, and so on were not facts the media was prone to point out. In the preface to After the Cataclysm: Postwar Indochina and the the Reconstruction of Imperial Ideology, the second volume of “The Political Economy of Human Rights” series, writers Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman wrote that, “The Free Press has fulfilled its primary obligations to the state by averting Western eyes from the carnage of the war and effacing U.S. responsibility.”
For now, the New York Times continues to avert “Western eyes from the carnage of the war and effacing U.S. responsibility” in regards to Rwanda. Sommers continues to reinforce certain lies. Chief among them deal with the Rwandan war and genocide. Sommers writes that Kagame led “a remarkable recovery from war and genocide in the heart of Africa,” and that his “government is renowned for reducing corruption, expanding security, addressing genocidal crimes and increasing women’s rights.” Sommers even says that, “Kagame is no Idi Amin or Charles G. Taylor.” But neither of the two men ever amassed the record for murder and genocide like Paul Kagame.
The truth of the matter is that Kagame is the instigator of the war and genocide in Rwandan and Democratic Republic of Congo. It was the army he led, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) that invaded Rwanda in 1990 and carried out extensive acts of terrorism and sabotage; who routinely violated ceasefire agreements; and who assassinated President Habyarimana in 1994 and within two hours conducted a massive military offensive that swept across the country in one hundreds days of genocidal violence. Not to mention the “overwhelming evidence of responsibility” of Kagame’s crimes in Congo, where, again, an estimated ten million have died.
As Sommers notes, “The government’s commanding presence in Rwandan lives is aggressively maintained by Kagame and a clique of other former Tutsi refugees from Uganda.” Here, Sommers is referring to the political and military leaders of the RPF. These men were part of the Ugandan national army, and the RPF was an arm of the Ugandan military. They wore Ugandan military uniforms. And it was this event, the 1990 invasion, that is integral to understanding all of what is transpiring. That, and the subordination to the U.S.—who is not only the main backer of the Museveni regime in Uganda, but Kagame in Rwanda.
When Uganda invaded Rwanda, its goal was to destabilize the government, and then overthrow it. This is what Museveni did in Uganda. And from October 1990 to April 1994 that is precisely what happened in Rwanda via the RPF. This is also what happened in Democratic Republic of Congo, when Museveni and Kagame invaded and overthrew President Mobutu, and conducted some of the most brutal crimes that were committed.
The second-in-command for United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, Col. Luc Marchal told the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR): “From my experience, my conclusion is that the RPF had one goal, seizing power by force and keeping it to themselves.” Marchal also stated that, “Not once, never have I sensed the desire to make concessions, to smooth rough edges, to reach a consensus.” He told the court that, “It was almost a daily struggle, and I received remarks because of the violations of the agreement”, and that, “All these elements led me to the conclusion that their goal was certainly not to concretize the peace process.” Marchal believes it was Kagame who assassinated President Habyarimana.
He is not alone in this regards.
There is also James Lyons, an FBI agent who came to the same conclusion.
Another UN investigation headed by Michael Hourigan, came to the conclusion as well. It’s report buried.
And former Rwandan genocide prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, who was removed from her ICTR duties after she insisted on prosecuting Kagame for the assassination and various other war crimes.
Robert Gersony, an American consultant hired by the UN, concluded that Kagame’s RPF committed genocide. He reported a “scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of civilian Hutu populations” by Kagame’s forces. Like Hourigan, his report was buried.
It was during this time, and acting on Gersony’s report, that UN forces were blocking refugees from returning. This was reported in the New York Times in late September of 1994:
the United Nations has stopped encouraging Rwandan refugees to return and is refusing even to assist those who wish to go home because of a report that the new, Tutsi-dominated Government in Rwanda has killed thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group.
The timing of this is important because earlier that month George Moose, a State Department official, sent a memo to Secretary of State Christopher Warren in which it was noted that the “RPA and Tutsi civilian surrogates had killed 10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month, with the RPA accounting for 95% of the killing.”
Spanish and French courts have even ruled on various matters related to the Rwandan and Congo conflicts (more so for the Spanish court), and both found the RPF responsible for the assassination of President Habyarimana, and the genocide that followed. And issued warrants.
It is for these reasons, and more, that it is unfathomable for Sommers to claim that Kagame is “addressing genocidal crimes” when Kagame’s crimes, and that of the RPF he commands, have gone unpunished. And it is cynical beyond belief for Sommers to imply that punishing the victims of the RPF—the government Kagame overthrew and those accused of “genocide”—makes the case. But not once has any RPF soldier been indicted at the ICTR or ICC. As noted, Carla del Ponte made an attempt to do so, but was systematically removed.
The ICTR has yet to find a plan to commit genocide in Rwanda. After nearly twenty years they have not uncovered a conspiracy to commit genocide. They have also refused to consider a RPF conspiracy, which there is significant evidence of.
And if you look at their biggest trial of top military personnel—Bagosora, et al—the ruling is revealing. For one, all were acquitted on conspiracy to commit genocide, the gravest charge.
The court acknowledged that “a cycle of ethnic violence against Tutsi civilians has often followed attacks by the RPF,” and that “[f]ollowing the October 1990 RPF invasion, there were mass arrests as well as localised killings at the time and in subsequent years in several northern communes,” and the court ruled that “the alternative explanations for the events have added relevant context to a few allegations against the Accused.”
The ICTR judges admit that the military preparations by the Rwandan government were “consistent with preparations for a political or military power struggle,” and that “in the context of the ongoing war with the RPF, this evidence does not invariably show that the purpose of arming and training these civilians or the preparation of lists was to kill Tutsi civilians,” and that “in the context of the immediate aftermath of the RPF’s violation of the cease fire agreement, it does not necessarily show an intention to use the forces to commit genocide.” What it shows is an intention to use the forces to stop the RPF’s efforts of overthrowing the government by military force—i.e. defend Rwanda against RPF aggression.
This is backed by what a couple of American analysts who closely studied the conflict found. In their piece “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Christian Davenport and Allan Stam write that,
Perhaps the most shocking result of our combination of information on troop locations involved the invasion itself: The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased. The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration’s claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.
Furthermore, the statement that Kagame is “increasing women’s rights” is disputable in one name: Victoire Ingabire. Here is a Rwandan woman who ended her exile by coming back to be a political opponent and fight for national reconciliation and democracy. A mother, she now sits in jail awaiting the conclusion of a kangaroo court trial that will surely convict her of Rwanda’s so-called “genocide ideology laws” that Human Rights Watch has warned is “a broad and ill-defined offense [which is used] as a tool to silence independent opinion and criticism.”
While there is a lot of important details missing from Sommers op-ed, and not all of his comments pan out, it still is an extraordinary development at the “paper of record” that Paul Kagame would be called the “Darling Dictator of the Day” who is clamping down on dissent at home while committing serious crimes in Democratic Republic of Congo. But again it could be a sign of the Darling’s day having ended, and if this is indeed the case, it is important to not only hold Kagame to account, but also U.S. officials who have facilitated him, backed him, and quite possibly directed him.
The NYT Makes Excuses for Rwanda’s Genocide in Congo
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| Companies who “do business” in Democratic Republic of Congo |
On page eight of the New York Times May 29, 2012 edition is a story about a leaked United Nations report which shows Rwandans were recruited by the Rwandan government to go fight in Democratic Republic of Congo, or the D.R.C.
Josh Kron’s article “U.N. Report Says Rwandans Recruited to Fight in Congo” reports that “rebel soldiers who have defected told United Nations officials that they were Rwandans who had been sent across the border to fight in a mutiny in eastern Congo that has displaced tens of thousands of civilians.”
Kron also reports that “Rwandan authorities have been seemingly complicit in recruiting soldiers for the new Congolese rebel leader, Gen. Bosco Ntaganda, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
It is rare to read this level of criticism of the Rwandan government in the New York Times. Rwanda is an important U.S. ally in Africa, and the “paper of record” often complements U.S. interests by providing differential treatment towards allies and foes.
So it comes as no surprise to see Kron makes excuse for Rwanda’s genocidal involvement in D.R.C.—a resource-rich African country which has suffered considerably and continuously since the late 1800s ever since colonial powers discovered the country’s wealth—and get a number of other issues wrong in the process.
For Kron, the reason Rwanda is even in D.R.C. is for self defense.
Tensions [between Rwanda and D.R.C.] began soon after the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which an estimated 800,000 ethnic Tutsis were killed by Hutus. Many organizers of the genocide fled across the border and later established a Hutu rebel group in eastern Congo bent on overturning the Rwandan government. Various militias supported by neighboring countries have been organized in Congo over the years. Rwanda in particular was accused of supporting Laurent Nkunda, a Congolese rebel who is also an ethnic Tutsi, and his movement, known as the National Congress for the People’s Defense, or the C.N.D.P., which in 2008 threatened to overturn the Congolese government.
There are quite a few things wrong with this statement. For starters, “800,000 ethnic Tutsis” is 200,000 more Tutsis than there were in the 1991 census. And with a reported 300,000 survivors that leaves the figure half-a-million high. Of the roughly one million killed in the Rwandan genocide, the majority were Hutu’s. The significance of this exposes a gaping hole in the official version of the Rwandan genocide: If the majority of the killed were Hutu, then who killed them and why?
Rwanda’s dominant politicay party, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (R.P.F.), which is headed by the country’s President Paul Kagame, has its roots in Uganda. The R.P.F. was an official arm of the Ugandan military, and consisted largely of Rwandan exiles that were a part of the U.S.-backed National Resistance Army, which was led by now Ugandan dictator Yoweri Museveni. Paul Kagame was the head of military intelligence for the N.R.A., which was an armed militia whose goal was to seize power in Uganda. After they successfully did so in the mid-1980s, the R.P.F. was created to carry out a similar plan in Rwanda. And on October 1, 1990 the R.P.F. invaded Rwanda from Uganda. And for nearly four years the R.P.F. conducted a plan to destabilize and overthrow the government, which came to a crescendo on April 6, 1994 when the R.P.F. assassinated President Habyarimana, and carried out a massive military offensive.
A couple of American analysts, Christian Davenport and Alan Stam, who studied the conflict closely noted in their article “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” that,
Perhaps the most shocking result of our combination of information on troop locations involved the invasion itself: The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased. The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration’s claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.
It was the R.P.F. who was the main antagonist in the conflict, and who largely outgunned the Rwandan military—which explains how they were able to overthrow an entire government in less than 100 days, and send their military forces fleeing to neighboring countries.
And this pattern, which occurred in Uganda, and repeated in Rwanda, was again carried out in Democratic Republic of Congo when Uganda and Rwanda invaded, overthrew the government of President Mobutu, and began butchering people. This was facilitated through men like General Ntaganda, who Kron describes as once having “military ties to [Paul Kagame’s] government.”
Kron goes on to write that, “Although [Ntaganda] was accused of orchestrating a massacre in eastern Congo as a rebel in 2008, General Ntaganda became a senior officer in the Congolese Army, working alongside the United Nations as well as Rwanda to subdue the Hutu rebels.”
This is very misleading, especially the word “although.” It is inaccurate to give the impression that Ntaganda’s record as a war criminal is an aberration in regards to his relationship with Kagame’s Rwanda. The leaked report and a previous U.N. report show that the Rwandan government is deeply involved in human rights abuses in the neighboring country. According to the U.N. Mapping report, which describes “The systematic attacks, in particular killings and massacres perpetrated against members of the Hutu ethnic group”:
These attacks resulted in a very large number of victims, probably tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, all nationalities combined. In the vast majority of cases reported, it was not a question of people killed unintentionally in the course of combat, but people targeted primarily by AFDL/APR/FAB forces and executed in their hundreds, often with edged weapons. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or pyschological integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten. Very large numbers of victims were forced to flee and travel long distances to escape their pursuers, who were trying to kill them. The hunt lasted for months, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of people subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading living conditions, without access to food or medication. On several occasions, the humanitarian aid intended for them was deliberately blocked …
And unlike Kron’s article, the mapping report also deals considerably with mineral exploitation. Democratic Republic of Congo is a very wealthy country, and the report states that, “A growing number of foreign actors became directly involved in exploiting the D.R.C.’s natural resources.” The report then names Rwanda and Uganda as doing so “either through the intermediary of their Congolese partners [writers note: e.g. Ntaganda] or connections or by directly occupying a part of the country.” In sum, the report stresses that, “Given the weakness and corruption of the central government, the D.R.C.’s wealth was within the grasp of any group violent and determined enough to impose its control by force.”
Another misleading aspect of Kron’s excuse for Rwanda’s involvement is the comment about “organizers of the [Rwandan] genocide fled across the border” to D.R.C. It is worth pointing out here that there are no “organizers,” at least as long as we keep to the official version which claims a Hutu conspiracy. The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (I.C.T.R.) has not convicted one person for the conspiracy or planning of genocide. The largest trial to date, that of Colonel Théoneste Bagosora and a few other former high-ranking Rwandan military officials, ended with an acquittal on charges of planning a genocide. The inability to uncover a plot to commit genocide, however, is largely due to the court’s unwillingness to consider or prosecute an R.P.F. conspiracy—where evidence is abound.
Furthermore, Rwanda was targeting a lot more than so-called “organizers of the genocide” in their effort “to subdue the Hutu rebels.” Australian soldiers doing United Nations peacekeeping work bore witness to the carnage of Rwandan forces against unarmed civilians. As reported in Australia’s Herald Sun:
By early 1995, the displaced persons’ camp at Kibeho was the biggest in Rwanda, sprawling for 9sq km and containing 80,000 to 100,000 people.
The 32 Australian soldiers and medical officers arrived there as part of the UN peacekeeping force on April 18, 1995.
There were daily random killings by the Rwandan soldiers, but the slaughter exploded out of control soon after 10am on April 22. The Australians had a grandstand view of the nightmare from the Zambian compound.
The RPA soldiers murdered women and children right up to the UN wire. Bodies were everywhere. For the Diggers behind the wire, the next few hours were agonising.
For the refugees, there was nowhere to run.
As the Australians collected the wounded from among the piles of dead, the crisis began to escalate as panic-stricken Hutus overran the Zambian compound, driven forward by machete-and rifle wielding militia.
Hundreds were killed in the crush and the Australians were forced to repel at bayonet point the terrified victims they were supposed to be protecting, pushing them back into the RPA killing zone.
The RPA went wild and cut loose with another hail of fire on the panicking crowd.
All of this, and more, goes a long way to explaining why, as Kron put it, “The relationship between Rwanda and Congo has long been considered crucial to the stability in one of Africa’s least stable regions, an area laid waste by militias over the last two decades.” This is partially accurate. The problem here is that Rwanda is not at the top of the political pyramid. While the Times will publish Kron acknowledging that Rwanda is recruiting forces for militias in D.R.C., what is inconspicuously missing from the article is that the destabilization of Congo—which has seen around ten million killed and millions more displaced since the Rwandan and Ugandan invasion in 1996—is part of a U.S. imperial project to control and exploit the wealth of the Great Lakes region.
The unwillingness to identify Rwanda as a subordinate of the United States (in fact the U.S. and U.S. businesses are completely missing in the article), or a major component of the “conflict mineral” wars, or to provide accurate information on the Rwandan genocide (which is absurdly used to explain why Rwandan forces are in D.R.C.), and such, leaves the article void of any means for readers to understand what is really going on.
The impression that is given, that Rwanda is merely involved to protect itself from “a Hutu rebel group in eastern Congo bent on overturning the Rwandan government” and thus supporting criminals like Ntaganda (who have gone astray from their noble purpose), is simply not true. Not only is the R.P.F. a considerably more powerful military force than the Hutu forces, as the events of the last 20 years show, but the narrative is a total distraction from what really happened and is happening, and why.
Breaking Lies: German Police Join Blockupy Protest????
Yesterday Occupy Canada caused a stir by posting the bottom picture with the claim that police in Frankfurt, Germany have taken off their riot helmets and joined the protesters. It was billed as a revolutionary moment.
At first, I too assumed it was true, but was skeptical in its revolutionary value. My question was: What if the protesters were to move from protesting to resistance? That is to say, would the cops join them in taking direct action to bring down the governments, or challenge the banks, and so on? Or, would they use force to stop them?
But, the questions were rendered moot when it was quickly pointed out that they were not joining the protesters, but escorting them, and that the police were busy containing the crowds, and arresting anyone who went beyond the acceptable and ineffectual protest.
All cops may be bastards, as the phrase goes, but one thing is for certain: Frankfurt cops have proved to be much less the bastards as America’s police force. Ergo, Oakland, New York and Chicago, where cops have been busy punching faces, caving in heads with batons, shooting unarmed protesters in the head with tear gas cannisters or firing rubber bullets at them, destroying camps, running over legal observers with motorcycles, harassing journalists, and much, much more.
Here is a video from this week in Chicago:
Of all the bloodied faces and bruised and broken bodies, it would be interested to know the extent of injuries the police endured, and whether those injuries were the direct occurence of protesters.
Furthemore, and as far as I can tell, nothing like this happened in Germany. Not even close.
Waltzing in Chicago: Protests versus Resistance
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I know some folks won’t like this, but I am unapologetic. It is what it is. Love it or hate it. I am tired of the absence of the working class in the Left. I am tired of the faux-revolutionary vanguardism, the posturing, and the delusions. I am tired of every single capitalist and imperialist event being greeted with a protest that never stands a chance of achieving a goddamn thing, and all the pride in getting beat up and arrested. All these protests are a waste of time. There, I said it. It really is just a rite of passage for a lot of folks. It’s all about them and their egos, and not about building a social movement to actually win. That is really how I feel about it, and it saddens me. Am I wrong? Am I over-generalizing? Maybe. But I honestly don’t think so.
In a lot of ways the modern protest has become a dance.
A ball is announced.
The police show up early in full riot gear, ready to shoot tear gas, beat batons over skulls, and arrest as many protesters as they can.
The protesters show up ready for said treatment.
The two groups embrace, and twirl around a downtown landscape. They look affectionately in each other’s eyes, and run through the familiar courting traditions that are expected of them: The police stand in a line, and like the game “Red Rover,” the protesters try to break through the line of cops.
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They never do.
The ball ends, and everyone goes home—or to jail.
And very shortly a new ball is announced, and the whole affair is repeated yet again.
Chicago, Miami, New York City, Oakland, and other places.
Red Rover, Red Rover, let Philly come over.
It becomes a rite of passage; a coming of age.
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It’s not about being able to post a picture of your bleeding skull, or bragging about getting arrested.
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| Look Ma, I got a busted skull! Ain’t I revolutionary? |
It involves building some kind of workplace or communal “organization” that people join and dedicate to winning certain goals.
Rushing into loosely-planned and organized protests at every single imperial and capitalist event is a spectacle (i.e. a dance). It is more for participants to feel as if they are doing something radical, than actually achieving a goal.
It doesn’t leave us any stronger, or them any weaker.
Every so often I look at the Occupy Wall Street page on Facebook and it’s very interesting. There are frequent criticisms of people saying they get and agree with their grievances, but don’t see their tactics as being successful. And then those who reflexively—and almost dogmatically—attack them and dismiss them.
One commenter I saw posted the remark, “You can think us later for liberating you.” No one seemed to notice the disturbing sense of vanguardism impregnated in the comment. But the initial persons comment was a fair critique that should be listened to. I think it reflects revolutionary potential. Folks are saying camping out in parks and protesting is ineffective. It’s not enough.
And when people say “Get a Job!” there is something to that. Working class people, not professional college students, don’t have the ability to miss work for weeks at a time to live in a tent at a city park. They have a mortgage to pay, mouths to feed, and so on. They don’t relate to the protesters. They don’t see they share the same interests. They are removed from their activities, and go on with their life, and try to get by. One day at a time. Anyone who can dedicate that much time to pointlessly getting arrested and beat up must not have a job. They must have some privilge.
Most people can’t risk their jobs getting arrested for protesting a NATO summit, especially when they don’t see a benefit that exceeds the costs. Does anyone really think NATO is going to be stopped? That Wall Street is going to be occupied? That the wars will end? That the system will be changed?
I am not talking about what is possible, but what is probable. To turn what is possible into what is probable will take time and dedication.
Not all of the dismissals and criticisms of Occupy/NATO protesters are valid, for sure. But unless activists and organizers on the Left take the time to actually consider them and reflect on them, I don’t see much room for improvement. It’s a lot like what the late Howard Zinn was fond of saying, “The cry of the poor is is not always just, but if you don’t listen to it, you will never know what justice is.”
And that’s part of the problem. The working class in America is un-organized. Organized labor has been largely defeated by decades of corporate and state assaults. But at the same time, the existing political movements are, to a large degree, ignoring labor—even while talking about it (leaving hints of vanguardism). The student movements have their value. But they cannot do it alone. And it’s not as if the working class in America is right-wing. That’s very far from the truth. It’s that the existing movements are largely made up of college kids who are organizing college kids. The Left desperately needs to organize the working class. In fact, it is imperative.
When it comes to "genocide," Guardian UK’s George Monbiot has pulled a Hitchens
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| George Monbiot having a fit |
There is just something about British left intellectuals.
Christopher Hitchens fell from grace when he allowed his atheism to become a tool for Western imperialism.
Now The Guardian UK’s George Monbiot has pulled a Hitchens by allowing his outrage of “genocide” to become a tool for Western imperialism.
It started last year with his tirade against writers David Peterson and Edward Herman over their book The Politics of Genocide. George just couldn’t believe they wrote what they did. By challenging the popular narrative of what happened in Rwanda and Srebrenica they were guilty of being “genocide deniers.” (See “George Monbiot and the Guardian on ‘Genocide Denial’ and ‘Revisionism’ ” for Peterson’s and Herman’s rebuttal)
Monbiot still buys the propaganda narrative put out by the West, and has been foaming at the mouth like a rabid dog ever since. His obsession has infected him like a virus, and now Monbiot has even published an email exchange he had with Noam Chomsky, who wrote the foreword for The Politics of Genocide. (Really bad form, George.) Monbiot tries and tries to get Chomsky to turn on Herman and Peterson, to which Noam says he will not because to do so “would be sheer cowardice.”
As someone who has read The Politics of Genocide (a few times), and who has checked the notes, I see nothing controversial. In fact, I highly recommend the book—especially the second edition because it has a new introduction with the compare and contrast of the conflicts in Libya and Sri Lanka.
I have also read The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics, the book on Srebrenica that Herman contributed to. Again, I don’t see what the fuss is about.
In regards to Srebrenica, Herman, Peterson and the others who contributed to The Srebrenica Massacre: Evidence, Context, Politics point out a few important facts.
In The Politics of Genocide, Herman and Peterson write that,
The case for eight thousand “men and boys” being executed at Srebrenica is extremely thin, resting in good part on the difficulty in separating executions from battle killings (of which there were many in the July 1995 Srebrenica actions), partly on highly contestable witness evidence (much under coercive plea bargaining), and an interest and passionate will-to-believe the worst of the thoroughly demonized Serbs.
This is why Herman, Peterson, et al. challenge the narrative. With such incomplete information it makes perfect sense to challenge the narrative that they were 8,000 Bosniaks who were the victims of “genocide” by Serb forces.
This is also quite possibly why Chomsky wrote to Monbiot that,
A second point raised in my letter to you (and in the article) is the vulgarization of the phrase “genocide,” so extreme as to amount to virtual Holocaust denial, and the reason why I rarely use the term. Take a concrete case: the murder of thousands of men and boys after women and children are allowed to flee if they can get away.
I’m referring to Fallujah, different from Srebrenica in many ways, among them that in the latter case the women and children were trucked out, and in the former case the destruction and slaughter was so extreme that current studies in medical journals estimate the scale of radiation-related deaths and diseases at beyond the level of Hiroshima. I would not however call it “genocide,” nor would you, and if the word were used, the more extreme apologists for western crimes, like Kamm, would go utterly berserk. Another of many illustrations of the two basic facts.
And of course, the information available on Rwanda is so overwhelming it’s astounding. There are just too many holes in the popular narrative which claims there was a genocide of Tutsi’s at the hands of “Hutu extremists” who planned the assassination of President Habyarimana and the violence that followed. Which is why I seriously doubt George Monbiot has read The Politics of Genocide, followed up with the notes, or anything. If he has, then I can only conclude that he is being intentionally dishonest.
Because had he read the Gersony report, he would have read about a “scene of systematic and sustained killing and persecution of civilian Hutu populations” by Kagame’s forces.
Had Monbiot read the U.S. State Department Memo to Secretary of State Warren Christopher he would know that “RPA and Tutsi civilian surrogates had killed 10,000 or more Hutu civilians per month, with the RPA accounting for 95% of the killing.”
George also could have read the affidavit of U.N investigator Michael Hourigan which notes that he found “considerable detail about information implicating President Kagame” in the assassination of former President Habyarimana. This was the event that kicked off the genocide, and which was quickly followed by a massive, organized RPF invasion within two hours.
This was confirmed by an FBI investigator, James Lyons.
And it also happens to compliment what UNAMIR official Col. Luc Marchal told the ICTR in his testimony to the court: “From my experience, my conclusion is that the RPF had one goal, seizing power by force and keeping it to themselves.” Marchal also stated that, “Not once, never have I sensed the desire to make concessions, to smooth rough edges, to reach a consensus.” He told the court that, “It was almost a daily struggle, and I received remarks because of the violations of the agreement,” and that, “All these elements led me to the conclusion that their goal was certainly not to concretize the peace process.”
As well as former ICTR prosecutor Carla del Ponte, who insisted on prosecuting Kagame and RPF officials for the assassination and their war crimes.
And I have yet to see Monbiot deal with any of this, or the Davenport-Stam work that shows the majority of deaths were Hutu. This is something Monbiot often refers to. But rather than address Christian Davenport’s study “Rwandan Political Violence in Space and Time,” which is the basis of Herman’s and Peterson’s comment, he just shoots the messengers. In their piece “What Really Happened in Rwanda?” Davenport and Stam write that,
According to the census, there were approximately 600,000 Tutsi in the country in 1991; according to the survival organization Ibuka, about 300,000 survived the 1994 slaughter. This suggested that out of the 800,000 to 1 million believed to have been killed then, more than half were Hutu. The finding was significant; it suggested that the majority of the victims of 1994 were of the same ethnicity as the government in power.
They also noted that,
Perhaps the most shocking result of our combination of information on troop locations involved the invasion itself: The killings in the zone controlled by the FAR seemed to escalate as the RPF moved into the country and acquired more territory. When the RPF advanced, large-scale killings escalated. When the RPF stopped, large-scale killings largely decreased. The data revealed in our maps was consistent with FAR claims that it would have stopped much of the killing if the RPF had simply called a halt to its invasion. This conclusion runs counter to the Kagame administration’s claims that the RPF continued its invasion to bring a halt to the killings.
In the summer of 1994, the RPF killings were so widespread and devastating that UN peacekeepers were blocking refugees from returning, citing the RPF killings and their fear for their safety.
Going back to the Gersony report, we know that the RPF carried out “large-scale indiscriminate killings of men, women, children, including the sick and the elderly,” and they did so with tactics like,
Local residents, including entire families, were called to community meetings, invited to receive information about “peace,” “security,” or “food distribution” issues. Once a crowd had assembled, it was assaulted through sudden sustained gunfire; or locked in buildings into which hand-grenades were thrown; systematically killed with manual instruments; or killed in large numbers other means.
What readers have got to understand is that the RPF were an official arm of the Ugandan military, and consisted largely of Rwandan exiles that were a part of the National Resistance Army, which was led by now Ugandan Dictator Yoweri Museveni. The NRA was an armed militia whose goal was to seize power. After they successfully did so in Uganda in the mid-1980s, the RPF was created to carry out the same plan in Rwanda. And on October 1, 1990 the RPF invaded Rwanda from Uganda. And for nearly four years the RPF conducted a plan to destabilize and overthrow the government, which came to a crescendo on April 6, 1994 when the RPF assassinated President Habyarimana, and carried out massive military offensive.
And this pattern, which occurred in Uganda, and repeated in Rwanda, was again carried out in Democratic Republic of Congo when Uganda and Rwanda invaded, overthrew the government and began butchering people. According to the UN Mapping report, which describes “The systematic attacks, in particular killings and massacres perpetrated against members of the Hutu ethnic group”:
These attacks resulted in a very large number of victims, probably tens of thousands of members of the Hutu ethnic group, all nationalities combined. In the vast majority of cases reported, it was not a question of people killed unintentionally in the course of combat, but people targeted primarily by AFDL/APR/FAB forces and executed in their hundreds, often with edged weapons. The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who posed no threat to the attacking forces. Numerous serious attacks on the physical or pyschological integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten. Very large numbers of victims were forced to flee and travel long distances to escape their pursuers, who were trying to kill them. The hunt lasted for months, resulting in the deaths of an unknown number of people subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading living conditions, without access to food or medication. On several occasions, the humanitarian aid intended for them was deliberately blocked …
Now, considering all of the above, and how the ICTR has yet to uncover a plan to commit genocide in Rwanda, or how not one RPF official has been prosecuted for well-documented crimes (del Ponte was actually fired for her insistence in prosecuting the RPF) there is a considerable basis for Herman and Peterson to challenge the official narrative on the genocide that occurred in Rwanda.
And nearly all of the above is mentioned in The Politics of Genocide, which, again, leads me to conclude that either George Monbiot didn’t read the material, or he is being intentionally dishonest in his smear campaign, which now not only includes Herman and Peterson, but Noam Chomsky as well. var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([‘_setAccount’, ‘UA-32113110-1’]); _gaq.push([‘_trackPageview’]); (function() { var ga = document.createElement(‘script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true; ga.src = (‘https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();
What the NYT Doesn’t Say About the Lockerbie Bombing
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| Pan Am Flight 103, bound for New York, exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988. A total of 270 people were killed, including 189 Americans. Credit: Martin Cleaver/Associated Press |
Robert McFadden’s article “Megrahi, Convicted in 1988 Lockerbie Bombing, Dies at 60” appears in today’s New York Times print edition and reports on the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in which two-hundred and seventy people were killed in the terrorist attack. And while McFadden offers a lot of information on the incident and the controversial case of the suspected bomber, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the article stops short of an alternative explanation.
McFadden writes that Al-Megrahi was “the only person convicted in the 1988 bombing of an American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland.” This much is true.
It is also true that al-Megrahi “insisted that he was not guilty,” as well as that he was a “former Libyan intelligence officer.”
And it is true that “after doctors said he was likely to die within three months, he was freed in 2009 under a Scottish law providing for compassionate release of prisoners with terminal illnesses.”
And of course it is true that,
Cheering crowds greeted his return to Libya, escorted by Colonel Qaddafi’s son Saif al-Islam in a grim propaganda coup. His release infuriated many families of the bombing victims, touched off angry protests in Britain and the United States and was condemned by President Obama and other Western leaders.
But compare the incident with what happened five months before the Lockerbie bombing when the U.S.S. Vincennes—which was patrolling the area in service to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in his war of aggression with Iran—shot Iranian Air Flight 655 out of the sky, killing all of its 290 civilian passengers.
The captain of the U.S.S. Vincennes, a Mr. Will Rogers, was not only greeted by cheering crowds following his indisputable act of terrorism (as opposed to the dispute surrounding al-Megrahi), but was rewarded for it. That is, according to the New York Times article in late 1988: “Crew of Cruiser That Downed Iranian Airliner Gets a Warm Homecoming.”
Not only is the differential treatment revealing, but the incident itself will have some bearing on the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Which brings us to when things begin to unravel in the case against al-Megrahi.
The enigmatic Mr. Megrahi had been the central figure of the case for decades, reviled as a terrorist but defended by many Libyans, and even some world leaders, as a victim of injustice whose trial, 12 years after the bombing, had been riddled with political overtones, memory gaps and flawed evidence.
Following years of Libya refusing to turn-over al-Megrahi, he finally agrees to turn himself over for a trial, which lasted just under 90 days. On the trial McFadden writes that, “None of the witnesses connected the suspects directly to the bomb.”
And even though McFadden reports that “Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothing that forensic experts had linked to the bomb, identified Mr. Megrahi as the buyer,” it is noted that “Mr. Gauci seemed doubtful and had picked others in photo displays,” and that,
It emerged that Mr. Gauci had repeatedly failed to identify Mr. Megrahi before the trial and had selected him only after seeing his photograph in a magazine and being shown the same photo in court. The date of the clothing sale was also in doubt.
McFadden then goes on to briefly explore how other witnesses were found to be “untruthful and unreliable,” and that one witness “admitted that he had lied at the trial” and that “the fragment [of a piece of evidence] he identified was never tested for residue of explosives, although it was the only evidence of possible Libyan involvement.”
The problems of the trial are compounded when McFadden reports how “Hans Köchler, a United Nations observer, called the trial ‘a spectacular miscarriage of justice,’ words echoed by Mr. [Nelson] Mandela.”
It is true that, as McFadden writes, “Critics charged that Mr. Megrahi’s release had been a part of Libyan oil and gas deals with Britain.” But what McFadden doesn’t report on is the pecuilar arrangement surrounding the release. Part of the deal was that al-Megrahi had to promise to drop an ongoing appeal. This is significant because in June of 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) noted a hand-full of incidences in the trial that validated Köchler’s declaration of a “miscarriage of justice.”
The most McFadden gives to this is the brief comment was that al-Megrahi “dropped a second [appeal] to clear his repatriation.” No explanation or details provided.
In other words, more than 1,500 words is dedicated to the trial and conviction of a man where the evidence of his guilt is non-existent, and the only trial that succeeded in finding him guilty was a declared “miscarriage of justice.”
Worse, the victim of this injustice had to promise to drop his appeal—which would prove embarassing to those who “reviled” him—just to be able to go home and die in peace, after struggling with terminal cancer.
By ignoring the U.S. bombing of an Iranian air liner, the more probable alternative explanation for who was behind the Lockerbie bombing is also ignored.
The alternative has some merit. Prior to the focus being put on al-Megrahi the U.S. government had built up their case against the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine General Command (PFLP-GC) leader, Ahmad Jabril. A U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency memo from 1989 says the PFLP-GC were contracted by Iranian authorities for $1 million to carry out the bombing.
And while McFadden reports that, “The court’s inference that the bomb had been transferred from the Frankfurt feeder flight was also cast into doubt when a Heathrow security guard revealed that Pan Am’s baggage area had been broken into 17 hours before the bombing, a circumstance never explored,” McFadden doesn’t explore the incident further, or provide relevant context.
It was a German investigation that found that the PFLP-GC were familiar with the components of the Lockerbie bombing, as they had used them before, and that the PFLP-GC had cased out the Frankfurt airport.
All signs pointed to Iran as the culprit for revenge for the Flight 655 bombing, but as the U.S. entered in slightly improved relationships with both Syria and Iran in 1990, the focus mysteriously changed to what McFadden calls the “enigmatic Mr. Megrahi” whom “little is known about.”
It is curious how McFadden and the New York Times can ignore the U.S. bombing of Flight 655 and the considerable evidence against Iran. Because in February 1989, in the aritlce “Palestinian Group and Iran Tied to Pan Am Bomb,” the Times noted that, “Evidence in the investigation of who planted the bomb that destroyed a Pan Am jumbo jet over Scotland in December increasingly points to a Palestinian terrorist group working in concert with hard-line elements within the Iranian Government, United States officials say.” A U.S. official is even quoted as saying that, ”There is no question that there is some organizational connection between the P.F.L.P. – G.C. and factions of the Iranian Government.”
When the U.S. went to war with Saddam in early 1991, they clearly wanted the support, or at leat the non-intereference of Syria and Iran. In a September 1990 article by Thomas Friedman, “CONFRONTATION IN THE GULF; Assad Assures Baker of Support in Gulf,” we are told that former Secretary of State James Baker met with Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, and that “their meeting was the first between a senior American official and the Syrian President since the December 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, which United States intelligence agencies widely believe was carried out by a Syrian-sponsored Palestinian organization”—the PFLP-GC.
Following this there was no more talk about the PFLP-GC, and Iran. The “evidence” that was “increasingly” pointing in one direction, and which had officials saying “there is no question” that it points this way, all of a sudden is disposed down the memory hole. Now it is Libya and al-Megrahi, and the New York Times didn’t miss a beat.
This is all a testament to the service provided by the propaganda system, which the NYT is a part of. It speaks volumes about the quality and integrity of the “paper of record” when it’s focus depends more on who Uncle Sam is eyeing as the perpetrator—which is clearly centered around politics—and less the available facts. We have seen this switch in countless other examples. At one time Saddam Hussein was a good guy. At one time it was Iran who was accused of the chemical warfare attack in Halabja, Iraq. And just as the U.S. government will change its tune to reflect the political environment of the time, the New York Times will follow suit. This latest article attests to that.
Why is the NYT Silent on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster Fallout?
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| NOAA has run OSCURS (Ocean Surface Current Simulator), a numeric model for ocean surface currents, to predict the movement of marine debris generated by the Japan tsunami over five years. The results are shown here. Year 1 = red; Year 2 = orange; Year 3 = yellow; Year 4 = light blue; Year 5 = violet. The OCSURS model is used to measure the movement of surface currents over time, as well as the movement of what is in or on the water. Map courtesy of J. Churnside (NOAA OAR) and created through Google. |
The efficacy of the propaganda system is simply amazing, and at the same time, terrifying.
A year ago last March it wasn’t just Japan that was exposed to the nightmare of modern civilization, but the whole world. When Mother Nature exposed the dangers of nuclear energy by sending an earthquake and tsunami to damage the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the fallout would go beyond Japan.
But over at the New York Times you would hardly know things are as bad as they are.
Browsing through articles from the last 30 days there were eleven on the Japanese nuclear power plant. And while the article “Japan to Nationalize Fukushima Utility” which was published on May 9 notes that, “The Fukushima Daiichi plant was heavily damaged by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in March 2011, which eventually led to multiple meltdowns at the site and a huge radiation leak that forced tens of thousands from their homes,” there is nothing else mentioned on the fallout. As if the worst of the incident was evacuated homes, and the compensation of the displaced.
Other than that there is no more mention of the effects of the nuclear disaster for the thirty-day period.
What there is mention of is how there is a large public response to the central governments attempts to restart some of the plants. But this comes across as contemptous for grassroots democracy.
In “Last Reactor of 50 in Japan Is Shut Down” published on May 5, the journalist Martin Fackler tells us that “last year’s nuclear disaster forced the nation to at least temporarily do without atomic power for the first time in 42 years.” Fackler goes on to report that,
Desperate to avert possible power shortages this summer, the government has tried to convince the public to allow some of the reactors to be restarted. It has conducted simulated stress tests to show whether reactors can withstand the sort of immense earthquake and tsunami that knocked out the Fukushima Daiichi plant.
The problem is that “the public has not accepted the tests, which were conducted largely behind closed doors,” and that, “About 300 protesters gathered Saturday in front of the Trade Ministry to celebrate the temporary shutdown of the nation’s nuclear program, and to call for a permanent end.”
Two days prior to the above article Fackler wrote a more lengthy article, “Japan’s Leaders, Pressed by Public, Fret as Nuclear Shutdown Nears,” on the struggle between the central government and local leaders backed by the public:
Japan’s leaders have made increasingly desperate attempts in recent months to avoid just such a scenario, trying to restart plants shut for routine maintenance and kept that way while they tried to convince a skittish public that the reactors were safe in the wake of last year’s nuclear catastrophe. But the government has run up against a crippling public distrust that recently found a powerful voice in local leaders who are orchestrating a rare challenge to Tokyo’s centralized power.
In discussing the efforts of a young mayor battling the central government to keep the plants closed, Fackler assures his audience that, “There is no guarantee that Mr. Hashimoto’s revolt will last past the summer, when the notion of life without nuclear power will become more real in a nation that relied on reactors to fuel its powerful postwar economy.”
Again the crisis at the Times is the energy crisis, not the environmental and health crisis that our high levels of energy consumption create.
And it’s not just Fackler’s pieces. In a Bloomberg News article published by the New York Times (“Japan’s Idling of Nuclear Plants Is Complete“) we read that,
Japan has had at least some electricity from nuclear plants since May 1970. And before last March, 50 nuclear facilities provided 30 percent of its electricity.
Now, however, the utilities powering the world’s third-biggest economy, behind China and the United States, have been forced to turn to coal, oil and gas-fired plants to keep factories, offices and households supplied with electricity.
Buying and importing those fuels is driving up costs and may lead to higher electricity bills and a further drag on an economy that has contracted in three of the past four years.
Quite simply, these articles read like propaganda put out by the nuclear industry. Because, again, the focus is on hyping concerns of an energy crisis, not our levels of consumption, or the risks nuclear energy poses to our health and the environment.
And beyond the last thirty days, that trend becomes more apparent when you do a simple search on the Times search engine. Look up “Fukushima nuclear” and you get 1,380 articles. Add the word “fallout” and it’s reduced to 143 articles.
But if you look elsewhere you find very serious concerns of fallout.
A BBC article in late March 2012 (“Probe finds high radiation in damaged Fukushima reactor“) reports that, “The operator of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear plant has said damage to one of the reactors is much worse than previously thought,” while also saying, “Radiation was up to 10 times the fatal dose, the highest yet recorded at the plant.”
Common Dreams reported yesterday that “Radioactive cesium measured in samples of silt taken from Tokyo Bay has increased to 1.5-13 times the amount detected in similar samples last August, according to a survey conducted by Kinki University.”
Not even a month after the disaster Forbes magazine reported that, “Radiation from Japan has been detected in drinking water in 13 more American cities, and cesium-137 has been found in American milk—in Montpelier, Vermont—for the first time since the Japan nuclear disaster began.”
A week ago Digital Journal informed its readers in an op-ed piece that,
The Fukushima facility has many fuel rods still filled with unspent fuel. If the fuel is radioactive MOX, there would be enough radiation in just one rod to kill millions of people. Worst case scenario involves the integrity and safety of the rods, which are made of low quality materials accompanied with poor maintenance. This situation means that any major earthquake could cause massive damage to the rods. Additionally, if all of the rods rupture simultaneously, this cataclysmic disaster could mean the annihilation of many life forms on planet Earth.
And in an article published in the International Journal of Health Services last December, a study found that,
Deaths rose 4.46 percent from 2010 to 2011 in the 14 weeks after the arrival of Japanese fallout, compared with a 2.34 percent increase in the prior 14 weeks. The number of infant deaths after Fukushima rose 1.80 percent, compared with a previous 8.37 percent decrease. Projecting these figures for the entire United States yields 13,983 total deaths and 822 infant deaths in excess of the expected.
The authors of the study then go on to say that, “This result suggested that radiation from Japan may have harmed Americans, thus meriting more research.”
Readers of the New York Times should be very concerned that they are getting a distorted picture of the Fukushima nuclear disaster at the “paper of record.” We should be looking into why it is that the energy concern is “all the news fit to print,” and not the environmental and health risks. Considering the powerful influence of lobbies with the media, the prospects of the nuclear energy industry influencing articles, and thus manipulating the opinions of viewers, is a serious concern. Rather than focusing on the concern of energy bills, we need a more serious and sustained focus on our consumption levels, their link to the global capitalist system, and more details on the health and environmental risks of not just nuclear energy, but a wide array of other issues relevant to our production and consumption trends. Unfortunately, the Times has come nowhere close to delivering this level of quality journalism.
the truth addict 