Economic Aspects of "Love"

[American Dream]

CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF EXTREME BRUTALITY

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/16/ ... ars-later/

September 16-18, 2012

A Never-Ending Horror Story
The Massacre at Sabra and Shatila, Thirty Years Later

by SONJA KARKAR

It happened thirty years ago – 16 September 1982. A massacre so awful that people who know about it cannot forget it. The photos are gruesome reminders – charred, decapitated, indecently violated corpses, the smell of rotting flesh, still as foul to those who remember it as when they were recoiling from it all those years ago. For the victims and the handful of survivors, it was a 36-hour holocaust without mercy. It was deliberate, it was planned and it was overseen. But to this day, the killers have gone unpunished.

Sabra and Shatila – two Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon – were the theatres for this staged slaughter. The former is no longer there and the other is a ghostly and ghastly reminder of man’s inhumanity to men, women and children – more specifically, Israel’s inhumanity, the inhumanity of the people who did Israel’s bidding and the world’s inhumanity for pretending it was of no consequence. There were international witnesses – doctors, nurses, journalists – who saw the macabre scenes and have tried to tell the world in vain ever since.


Each act was barbarous enough on its own to warrant fear and loathing. It was human savagery at its worst and Dr Ang Swee Chai was an eye witness as she worked with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society on the dying and the wounded amongst the dead. What she saw was so unimaginable that the atrocities committed need to be separated from each other to even begin comprehending the viciousness of the crimes. [1]

People Tortured. Blackened bodies smelling of roasted flesh from the power shocks that had convulsed their bodies before their hearts gave out – the electric wires still tied around their lifeless limbs

People with gouged out eye sockets. Faces unrecognisable with the gaping holes that had plunged them into darkness before their lives were thankfully ended.

Women raped. Not once – but two, three, four times – horribly violated, their legs shamelessly ripped apart with not even the cover of clothing to preserve their dignity at the moment of death.

Children dynamited alive. So many body parts ripped from their tiny torsos, so hard to know to whom they belonged – just mounds of bloodied limbs amongst the tousled heads of children in pools of blood.

Families executed. Blood, blood and more blood sprayed on the walls of homes where whole families had been axed to death in a frenzy or lined up for a more orderly execution.

There were also journalists who were there in the aftermath and who had equally gruesome stories to tell, none of which made the sort of screaming front page headlines that should have caused lawmakers to demand immediate answers. What they saw led them to write shell-shocked accounts that have vanished now into the archives, but are no less disturbing now. These accounts too need to be individually absorbed, lest they be lumped together as just the collective dead rather than the systematic torture and killing of individual, innocent human beings.

Women gunned down while cooking in their kitchens. [2] The headless body of a baby in diapers lying next to two dead women. [3] An infant, its tiny legs streaked with blood, shot in the back by a single bullet. [4] Slaughtered babies, their bodies blackened as they decomposed, tossed into rubbish heaps together with Israeli army equipment and empty bottles of whiskey. [5] An old man castrated, with flies thick upon his torn intestines. [6] Children with their throats slashed. [7] Mounds of rotting corpses bloated in the heat – young boys all shot at point-blank range. [8]

And most numbing of all are the recollections of the survivors whose experiences were so shockingly traumatic that to recall them must have been painful beyond all imaginings. One survivor, Nohad Srour, 35 said:

“I was carrying my one year-old baby sister and she was yelling “Mama! Mama!” then suddenly nothing. I looked at her and her brain had fallen out of her head and down my arm. I looked at the man who shot us. I’ll never forget his face. Then I felt two bullets pierce my shoulder and finger. I fell. I didn’t lose consciousness, but I pretended to be dead.”[9]

The statistics of those killed vary, but even according to the Israeli military, the official count was 700 people killed while Israeli journalist, Amnon Kapeliouk put the figure at 3,500. [10] The Palestinian Red Crescent Society put the number killed at over 2,000.[11] Regardless of the numbers, they would not and could not mitigate what are clear crimes against humanity.

Fifteen years later, Robert Fisk, the journalist who had been one of the first on the scene, said:

“Had Palestinians massacred 2,000 Israelis 15 years ago, would anyone doubt that the world’s press and television would be remembering so terrible a deed this morning? Yet this week, not a single newspaper in the United States – or Britain for that matter – has even mentioned the anniversary of Sabra and Shatila.”[12]

Thirty years later it is no different.

The political developments

What happened must be set against the background of a Lebanon that had been invaded by the Israeli army only months earlier, supposedly in ‘retaliation’ for the attempted assassination of the Israeli Ambassador in London on 4 June 1982. Israel attributed the attempt to Arafat’s Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) then resident in Beirut. In reality, it was a rival militant group headed by Abu Nidal. Israel wanted to oust the PLO from Lebanon altogether and on 6 June 1982, Israel began its devastating assault on the Lebanese and Palestinian civilian population in the southern part of Lebanon. Lebanese government casualty figures numbered the dead at around 19,000 with some 30,000 wounded, but these numbers are hardly accurate because of the mass graves and other bodies lost in the rubble. [13]

By 1 September, a cease-fire had been mediated by United States envoy Philip Habib, and Arafat and his men surrendered their weapons and were evacuated from Beirut with guarantees by the US that the civilians left behind in the camps would be protected by a multinational peacekeeping force. That guarantee was not kept and the vacuum then created, paved the way for the atrocities that followed.

As soon as the peacekeeping force was withdrawn, the then Israeli Defence Minister Ariel Sharon moved to root out some “2,000 terrorists” he claimed were still hiding in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila. After totally surrounding the refugee camps with tanks and soldiers, Sharon ordered the shelling of the camps and the bombardment continued throughout the afternoon and into the evening of 15 September leaving the “mopping-up” of the camps to the Lebanese right-wing Christian militia, known as the Phalangists. The next day, the Phalangists – armed and trained by the Israeli army – entered the camps and proceeded to massacre the unarmed civilians while Israel’s General Yaron and his men watched the entire operations. More grotesquely, the Israeli army ensured there was no lull in the 36 hours of killings and illuminated the area with flares at night and tightened their cordon around the camps to make sure that no civilian could escape the terror that had been unleashed.

Inquiries, charges and off scot-free

Although Israel’s Kahan Commission of Inquiry did not find any Israeli directly responsible, it did find that Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for “not ordering appropriate measures for preventing or reducing the danger of massacre” before sending the Phalangists into the camps. It, therefore, lamely recommended that the Israeli prime minister consider removing him from office. [14] Sharon resigned but remained as Minister without portfolio and joined two parliamentary commissions on defence and Lebanese affairs. There is no doubt, as Chomsky points out “that the inquiry was not intended for people who have a prejudice in favour of truth and honesty”, but it certainly gained support for Israel in the US Congress and among the public. [15] It took an International Commission of Inquiry headed by Sean MacBride to find that Israel was “directly responsible” because the camps were under its jurisdiction as an occupying power. [16] Yet, despite the UN describing the heinous operation as a “criminal massacre” and declaring it an act of genocide [17], no one was prosecuted.

It was not until 2001 that a law suit was filed in Belgium by the survivors of the massacre and relatives of the victims against Sharon alleging his personal responsibility. However, the court did not allow for “universal jurisdiction” – a principle which was intended to remove safe havens for war criminals and allow their prosecution across states. The case was won on appeal and the trial allowed to proceed, but without Sharon who by then was prime minister of Israel and had immunity. US interference led to the Belgian Parliament gutting the universal jurisdiction law and by the time the International Criminal Court was established in The Hague the following year, the perpetrators of the Sabra and Shatila massacre could no longer be tried because its terms of reference did not allow it to hear cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide pre-dating 1 July 2002. Neither Sharon nor those who carried out the massacres have ever been punished for their horrendous crimes.

The bigger picture

The length of time since these acts were carried out should be no impediment to exposing the truth. More than 60 years after the Nazi atrocities against the Jews in Europe, the world still mourns and remembers and erects monuments and museums to that violent holocaust. How they are done, to whom they are done and to how many does not make the crimes any more or less heinous. They can never be justified even on the strength of one state’s rationale that another people ought to be punished, or worse still, are simply inferior or worthless beings. It should lead all of us to question on whose judgment are such decisions made and how can we possibly justify such crimes at all?

The atrocities committed in the camps of Sabra and Shatila should be put in the context of an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people. The MacBride report found that these atrocities “were not inconsistent with wider Israeli intentions to destroy Palestinian political will and cultural identity.” [17] Since Deir Yassin and the other massacres of 1948, those who survived have joined hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fleeing a litany of massacres committed in 1953, 1967, and the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, and the killing continues today. The most recent being the 2008-2009 Gaza massacre – that 3 week merciless onslaught, a festering sore without relief as the people are further punished by an impossible siege that denies them their most basic rights.

Thus were the victims and survivors of the Sabra and Shatila massacre gathered up in the perpetual nakba of the slaughtered, the dispossessed, the displaced and the discarded - a pattern of ethnic cleansing perpetrated under the Zionist plan to finally and forever extinguish Palestinian society and its people.

This is why we must remember Sabra and Shatila, thirty years on.


Sonja Karkar is the founder of Women for Palestine (WFP), a Melbourne-based human rights group and co-founder of Australians for Palestine (AFP), an advocacy group that provides a voice for Palestine at all levels of Australian society. She is the editor of the website http://www.australiansforpalestine.com . Her email address is sonjakarkar@womenforpalestine.org

Footnotes:

[1] Dr Ang Swee Chai, “From Beirut to Jerusalem”, Grafton Books, London, 1989

[2] James MacManus, Guardian, 20 September 1982

[3] Loren Jenkins, Washington Post, 20 September 1982

[4] Elaine Carey, Daily Mail, 20 September 1982

[5] Robert Fisk, “Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War”, London: Oxford University Press, 1990 [6] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[7] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[8] Robert Fisk, ibid.

[9] Lebanese Daily Star, 16 September 1998

[10] Amnon Kapeliouk, “Sabra & Chatila – Inquiry into a Massacre”, November 1982

[11] Schiff and Ya’ari,, Israel’s Lebanon War, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1984,

[12] Robert Fisk, Fifteen Years After the Bloodbath, The World turns its Back, shaml.org, 1997 [13] Noam Chomsky, “The Fatal Triangle” South End Press, Cambridge MA, p.221

[14] The Complete Kahan Commission Report, Princeton, Karz Cohl, 1983, p. 125 (Hereafter, the Kahan Commission Report). [15] Chomsky, ibid. p.406

[16] The Report of the International Commission to Enquire into Reported Violations of International Law by Israel during Its Invasion of the Lebanon, Sean MacBride, 1983 (referred to as the International Commission of Inquiry or MacBride report) [17] United Nations General Assembly Resolution, 16 December 1982

[18] MacBride report, ibid. p.179

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://kloncke.com/2012/09/17/the-life-we-want/

The Life We Want

September 17, 2012


What is keeping us from the life we want?

Racism, capitalism, gender oppression, ableism, systematic destruction of the earth …

What is the life we want?

A life spent lovingly transforming, dismantling and abolishing racism, capitalism, gender oppression, ableism, systematic destruction of the earth …

No, really: What is the life we want?

A life in which everything is clear, and goes our way. A life of no pain, or only pain that is beautiful.

No, really: What is the life we want?

A life spent lovingly …

[American Dream]

Feminism is not simply a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure than women have equal rights with men; it is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels—sex, race, and class, to name a few—-and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.

— bell hooks

[American Dream]

Kolkata, India

[American Dream]

http://english.al-akhbar.com/blogs/angr ... ual-weapon

The Western Art of Offending Muslims: the Sexual Weapon

By As'ad AbuKhalil - Mon, 2012-09-17


The Western art of offending Muslims is a long established art. Western Christians have excelled in it and modern Zionists (Jewish, Christian, and atheist) have merely incorporated the clichés of Western Christian hatred of Islam and Muslims. Of course, fanatical Muslim groups have deliberately exploited the release of The Innocence of Muslims in order to whip up hate and hostility and to advance their own horrific, fanatical agenda. But their ability to resonate has to do with history.

The sexual content of the movie tells the story. For centuries, Western Christians offended Muslims with their sexual obsession with the life of Mohammad. From the earliest encounter of Christians with Islam, the life of Mohammad was considered the primary object of theological wrath.

For Christians, Mohammad did not represent the ascetic ideal that is embodied in the Christian moral system. Furthermore, he did not perform the miracles that he was expected to perform as a legitimate prophet – in the eyes of Christians. But Mohammad’s sexual life was always on the mind of Christian critics.

Those who formed the Christian church and constructed the Christian value system, promoted an ascetic ideal for the believers. Thus, there are no references to the earthly pleasure preferences and concerns for Jesus in the New Testament. Jesus, as a Jewish man in his 30s, must have been married, and yet the accounts of Jesus life contain no references whatsoever to a wife. There is nothing in the official church accounts about any pleasures of the earth that Jesus enjoyed. That would have conflicted with Christian morality where happiness is to be sought in the “City of God” and not in the “city of man.”

An ideal Christian man would have lived his life like St. Augustine, who in order to resist the temptations of the flesh would not allow women to be in his vicinity and would not even chew his food to avoid experiencing pleasure. St. Augustine admitted in his “Confessions” that he used to plead for God to save him in earlier years but would add: “but not yet.”

Islam – to the chagrin of early Christian critics – did not share that ascetic morality with Christianity. A man who came to the Prophet to inform him that he would not get married and would devote his life to God, was met with a surprised reaction from the Prophet. We know what food the prophet enjoyed and we know that the Prophet enjoyed sex with his wives. That did not offend early Muslims who often bragged about the sexual prowess of the Prophet and his companions.

For early Muslims, this was not a weakness and it was not shameful. Muslims were aware that their religion did not abhor the enjoyment of earthly pleasures. Muslims only became defensive about such matters when they incorporated some of the Christian moral sensibilities of shame and politeness and even streaks of asceticism into their religious practice.

Yet, Christian polemics against Islam always resorted to sexual insults and taunting. The story of Zaynab Bint al-Jahash was a favorite story for Orientalists and for Christian polemicists (and the two often were one). For them, the idea that Mohammad was attracted to a woman was scandalous in itself, and that she was married to his adopted son, Zayd, only made the scandal more salacious to Westerners.

Contemporary Muslims became so aware of the Western Christian legacy of polemics that the story of Zaynab is now often ignored in Arab Muslim accounts. Unsurprisingly, the story of Zaynab made it into the film.

Fittingly, the producer of the film selected a pornographer to direct his film. He knew that sexual insults of the Prophet had to be included in the project for extra effect. He, growing up in Egypt, knew that contemporary Muslims are very sensitive on this subject. But this is not unique to Christian insults of Muslims and Islam. Western anti-Semites often used sexual insults against Jews and Judaism – and this is not the only similarity in the style of hate between anti-Semites and anti-Muslims. Yet, some Zionist Jews are in the forefront of the proponents of the Western ideology of hostility against Islam and Muslims.

Western views of Muslims have often focused on the sexual. The native Arab or native Muslim is seen as a sexual predator who is intent on adding yet another wife to his harem. The film that is being discussed and protested against did not appear in a vacuum. There is a long history of Western Christian hostility behind it.

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

http://todos-somos-marcos.tumblr.com/post/9902941726

[American Dream]

I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe that there will be that kind of clash but I don't think it will be based on the color of the skin.

—Malcolm X

[American Dream]

I grew up in the midst of poverty but every black kid that I knew could read and write. We have to talk about the fact that we cannot educate for critical consciousness if we have a group of people who cannot access Fanon, Cabral, or Audre Lorde because they can’t read or write. How did Malcolm X radicalize his consciousness? He did it through books. If you deprive working-class and poor black people of access to reading and writing, you are making them that much farther removed from being a class that can engage in revolutionary resistance.”

--bell hooks

[American Dream]

[American Dream]

Submission is death, Autonomy is life

[American Dream]

The Most Brutal Genocide Money Can Buy

September 19, 2012

By Andre Vltchek
Source: Counterpunch


The camp for Congolese refugees in Kisoro is overcrowded, and people keep flowing in. The border between Uganda and DR Congo is just a few kilometers away, and right behind the border the vicious fighting goes on; there is true bloodshed and carnage.

The border is called Bunagana. I drive there, I film, and I talk to a few people. There is tension, everybody is edgy – locals and refugees. One cannot tell who is who. Both Ugandans and Congolese know, but, the outsider cannot tell the difference; it is one region, one area. People were coming back and forth for years and decades, people were mixing, staying at both sides of the border legally and illegally.

But now, there is almost nothing left to go back to at the other side of the border. Murderous militia M23 recently went on the rampage – killing, raping and looting with no mercy, and with absolute impunity.

M23 is supported by Rwanda, by President Kagame and by his RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front). Rwanda and Uganda are old allies. They are looting DR Congo and its natural riches, mostly in unison, and with deadly precision. Their forces are supported, armed and trained by the West (Europe and the United States). So in the lexicon of political indoctrination and disinformation that is being spread by mass media on both sides of the Atlantic, the governments and armed forces of Uganda and Rwanda are defined as the ‘good guys’, they are even encouraged to serve in the lucrative ‘peacekeeping missions’ in Somalia, South Sudan and elsewhere.

It is widely believed that around 6 to10 million Congolese people have lost their lives since the 90’s – which makes it the deadliest genocide since the WWII. One of the richest countries on earth in terms of natural wealth, was reduced to the lowest ranking on HDI (Human Development Index of UNDP, 2011).

What is shocking is that almost nobody in Europe or North America seems to know about the situation. Some have heard about ‘the civil war’ in the Great Lakes region; some have heard about the refugees and the victims; some have even read about the pathetic bunch of stoned lunatics, running around the jungle with Kalashnikovs and hand grenades.

But of the genocide, committed on behalf of Western business and geo-political interests? There is not a clue.

Reports coming from several Western press agencies, depict the situation in Kisoro in gloomy and abstract terms, that are full of clichés. “Hospitals are overcrowded”, reads one of them.

Kisoro hospital that I visited two days after the appearance of the reports, could hardly be described as overcrowded, but the ‘crowds’ were outside, consisting of dozens of people trying to make their way through the gate and the wire grid-protected perimeter, to the medical facility. The Hospital is staffed with confused international doctors and local nurses. After some negotiation, I am taken to several wounded Congolese soldiers, who are resting on cots. They are too frightened, and resolutely refuse to be interviewed.

“Nobody would say it openly, but no refugee would end up in this hospital”, explains my driver who is from the capital city of Kampala. “Locals are instructed to report all Congolese people to the authorities. Those who escape DRC, end up in the camps. Unless they have some private arrangement with the authorities…”

“Yesterday I saw 20 Congolese soldiers walking down the road away from the border”, explained an elementary school teacher, who speaks to me just a few minutes drive from Bunagana border. “They were not armed: they usually leave their weapons at the border crossing.”

I am wondering what that means? The regular Congolese army is supposed to be fighting the Rwanda-backed M23. So what are they doing here? At least in theory, shouldn’t they be immediately returned to DR Congo, or treated as deserters? After all, everybody now agrees that the ravishment of East Kivu, right across the border, could amount to genocide. And these well-nourished men in uniforms, are supposed to be defending their women, children and men, instead of getting sanatorium treatment in Uganda.
But it is obvious that Congolese soldiers in East Kivu are not encouraged to stay in their country, and fight pro-Rwandan and therefore pro-Western militias.

As I mentioned, the cyberspace is constantly fed by the reports from major Western press agencies, but I appear to be the only foreigner around, with professional still and video equipment. And I am here in order to put the final touches, to my documentary film, not for some mass media-related assignment. There are obviously no uncomfortable questions being asked. Authorities are alert but generally at ease, they show no fear. They don’t shoot at me; they don’t try to arrest me this time. They just shoe me away as if I was some annoying fly. But I am persistently making my rounds, shuttling between the border from which I now clearly hear fighting, to the camp, IRC post and the airstrip where a Russian piloted UN MI-8 helicopter parks, ready for immediate departure.

“The UN is shuttling one Ugandan minister between Kampala and Kisoro”, I am told by an onlooker, in a whisper.

“Minister of what?”, I ask cautiously, but nobody knows. And I have no way of verifying. Uganda is a country of rumors.

I park the car and enter Nyakabande refugee camp, the one at the outskirts of Kisoro. I immediately begin working, knowing the risk, and realizing that every second counts. It takes just a couple of minutes, and a security guard intercepts me.

Soon I am facing the head of the camp, a thoroughly arrogant individual, with a spiteful way of talking. He refers to me as “darling”, despite my beard. I confront him; demanding to be allowed to film and take photographs. Several of my official IDs are rejected without any closer scrutiny. He is demanding for some ‘special permits’ from Kampala, which is around 500 kilometers away. I demand that he backs up and let me film, photograph and talk to the refugees. He laughs at me. He feels so certain of himself, that he shouts in my face that he will not identify himself, and will not give his name. When I insist, he calls the armed forces and orders them to throw me out of the camp. In DR Congo I would be lucky to survive such a confrontation.

“He is Rwandese”, somebody whispers in my ear as I am climbing into the vehicle.

“What?” I scream. I really do.

“His name and the way he speaks. Maybe he grew up here, in Uganda, but he speaks like Rwandese.”

Rumors again?

I am trying to make the story simple. Not really simple, because there is no way to do it, but just a bit simpler.

The other day I was speaking to the co-producer and the editor of our huge 150-minute documentary film “Rwandan Gambit”. We discussed the complexity of the Great Lakes story. I have made films and written books on the Indonesian genocide of 1965/66, on the entire system of neo-colonialism in Oceania, on Chile and many other places. But nowhere else is the story is so complex and so blurred; nowhere else, I feel that I have to begin from zero.

What does the West know? What do the people in New York, London, Paris or Sydney imagine when one utters the names Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda or DR Congo separately or in one single breathe? And I am talking about the educated people, not the crowd that gets the news from the network television stations.

Chances are they saw “Hotel Rwanda”: a film about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. About how Hutus suddenly went bananas, and began massacring innocent Tutsis. And how one good, heroic man – (in real life, his name is Paul Rusesabagina, and the hotel in Kigali is named Mille Collines) – saved hundreds of innocent lives.
A few months ago, I went back to Mille Collines for a cup of coffee, and had a chat with the headwaiter. Of course he had no clue that my editor spoke to Paul Rusesabagina and found out, that he was forced to leave Rwanda. “Do you know where Mr. Rusesabagina is?” I asked naively. “In South Africa”, came the reply. “Why do you ask?” “Just being curious”, I said.
So, how do I summarize what I found, during those three years of intensive work on the film on Rwanda and Congo?

First of all, all four countries involved: Rwanda, Burundi, DR Congo and Uganda have been suffering from the worst cases of colonialism and neo-colonialism. To begin with, Congo (then Zaire) had Patrice Lumumba, one of the greatest African leaders, assassinated by the West.

Emira Woods, Co-Director of Foreign Policy In Focus, explained in the film: “You had this liberation fighter Patrice Lumumba, who came to power as a leader of a unionist movement, a visionary who wanted to have the resources of the continent, as well as the country, serve the interest of the continent; to feed the children of the continent. And he was assassinated at the hands of the US and the UK – two key geopolitical actors, who wanted to deny the right of the Congo to truly seek its own destiny, to have a future determined by its own people.”

When the President of Rwanda – Paul Kagame – was living in exile in Uganda, he became a close friend of the now Ugandan President, Yoweri Museveni. They even went to the same high school together – in Mbarara. Eventually Kagame became the head of Ugandan military intelligence, and his RPF had been funded by the Western sources through the Ugandan channels, as was confirmed to us by the former US Ambassador to Rwanda – Robert Flaten.

In that period of time, one prominent Ugandan businessman who wants to remain anonymous for now at least, told me: “In Uganda, Paul Kagame is known as Pilato(after Pontius Pilate). He was the most sadistic killer and torturer, when he was the head of the Military Intelligence of Uganda.”

One of the many victims (in Uganda)who were under the supervision of Paul Kagame, declared to me in an interview, in Kampala on August 27, 2012: “I was electrocuted through my testicles as I was tied. Interrogators were using the so called kandoya. The kandoya involved tying forcefully, both of my hands behind my back, thus forcing my chest to widen, and in the process causing internal bleeding. After that I was again tied in a way that made me swing like a pendulum, and that is when electric torture was applied again. All this took place in Katabi Military Barracks in Entebbe, in 1987, when Paul Kagame was in charge. I spotted him on several occasions in the background. Most of the interrogators were Rwandese.”
The dreadful human rights record of Paul Kagame naturally did not deter the US and its allies from supporting Kagame and the RPF, as it did not deter the West from supporting other sadistic murderers in Indonesia, the Arab world, El Salvador, Argentina, Chile, South Africa and elsewhere.

By the beginning of the 1990’s, the RPF had been penetrating Rwandan territory from Uganda for years, killing civilians and forcing hundreds of thousands of refugees to flee their homes. There were already hundreds of thousands of refugees from Burundi – mainly Hutu – living in Rwanda, most of them arriving after the bloody and near-genocidal crackdown, of the Burundian Tutsi elites against Hutus.Two months ago, I ventured to Kirundo Province of Burundi, together with an interpreter, and the villagers recalled vividly and on the record (for my film) the horrors of 1979 exodus from their country. “The situation inside Burundi was so dreadful, that Hutus would not even want to bury their dead in their own country. They were carrying them across the border to Rwanda.”

In their books, Andrew Wallis (Silent accomplice), Barbara F. Walter, and Jack L. Snyder (Civil Wars, Insecurity, and Intervention) argue:
In 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front, a rebel group composed mostly of Tutsi refugees, invaded northern Rwanda from Uganda in an attempt to defeat the Hutu-led government. They began the Rwandan Civil War, fought between the Hutu regime, with support from Francophone Africa and France… and the RPF, with support from Uganda. This exacerbated ethnic tensions in the country. In response, many Hutu gravitated toward the Hutu Power ideology, with the prompting of state-controlled and independent Rwandan media.

The racist rhetoric and agitation had been mounting across the country. The leitmotif was that, Tutsi were enslaving Hutu and had to be resisted at all cost.

The IMF was not idle either. It did its best to destabilize Rwanda, impoverished it and devalued its currency.

In his penetrating analysis of the economic and social causes behind the Rwandan holocaust, Michel Chossudovsky, a Canadian economist and a professor of economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa,focused his attention on how the structural adjustment policies of the IMF and the World Bank contributed to the disaster in the Great Lakes Region:

To lay the blame solely on deep-seated tribal hatred not only exonerates the great powers and the donors, it also distorts an exceedingly complex process of economic, social and political disintegration affecting an entire nation of more than seven million people… Rwanda, however, is but one among many countries in sub-Saharan Africa (not to mention recent developments in Burundi where famine and ethnic massacres are rampant) which are facing a similar predicament. And in many respects the Rwandan 1990 devaluation appears almost as a ‘laboratory test case’ as well as a threatening ‘danger signal’ for the devaluation of the CFA franc implemented on the instructions of the IMF and the French Treasury in January 1994 by the same amount, 50%.

And in the report prepared for the defense team at ICTR on June 2002, German analyst UweFriesecke went even further by arguing that:

Western powers, most prominently the Anglo-American powers with the Francophone powers acting as competing junior partners, have caused the crises in the Great Lakes region of Africa during the 1980s and 1990s in a twofold manner and are therefore responsible for the human catastrophe that followed. First, they ruined the region like the rest of the continent through the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) structural adjustment policy economically. Secondly, they intervened with cover operations to manipulate simmering conflicts for the purpose of political controle. The combination of both led to the disaster in Rwanda in 1994.

In 1994 the country was in total disarray, hit by misery, by RPF dashes across the border and by mounting refuges crises.

And then, on April 6, 1994, the airplane carrying the Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana and Cyprien Ntaryamira, the Hutu president of Burundi, was shot down on its final approachto Kigali airport, its debris scattering all over the backyard of Habyarimana’s mansion, killing everyone on board, including the French crew. The country erupted.

The Hutu militia groups, including the notorious Interahamwe, began massacring members of Tutsi minority, including women and children. In just 100 days, between 500,000 and 1 million people died, although it is uncertain what the exact demographics of the victims were, as by then the RPF was already on Rwandan territory, and according to many experts, deeply involved in the slaughter as well, as it was marching towards the capital city of Kigali.

The 100 days of genocidal terror are very well documented, although some are arguing that it is partial and one-sided.

The essential question remains – “Who downed the plane with two Presidents”? – As this was clearly the trigger to the consequent events.

In my film, I worked closely with the Australian attorney Michael Hourigan, the former ICTR investigator, who clearly indicated that he was approached by trustworthy sources close to Kagame’s regime. They were scared but determined to tell the truth. It was the RPF that downed the plane. Then, Hourigan was summoned to The Hague, and his testimony was disputed and eventually he was forced to resign, as he believes, because of the pressure from some of the Western powers.

Until now, not one RPF official or soldier has stood trial at the ICTR (International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda) in Arusha, Tanzania. The tribunal is one-sided, dealing exclusively with the crimes committed by Hutu against Tutsi.

During the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, between 500,000 and 1 million people lost their lives, in the neighboring DR Congo the number of victims fluctuates between 6 and 10 million, between 1996 and now, depending on the sources.

People are literally murdered over Coltan, Uranium, Gold, Diamonds, and other strategic and precious minerals and gems.

Both Rwanda and Uganda – key Western allies – have been involved. After the Rwandan genocide, President Paul Kagame and the RPF found a very good excuse to penetrate neighboring DRCongo – there were Hutu genocide cadres hiding among the refugees, and the new Rwandan government, had the moral mandate, to pursue them across the border.

Although the RPF was involved in some gruesome reprisal massacres, including the 1995 Kibeho Massacre of thousands, possibly tens of thousands of mainly Hutu refugees (in my film I use one powerful testimony of Terry Pickard – Australian military medic who in 1995 witnessed the carnage) –the real horror was reserved for Congo.

Both Rwandan and Ugandan forces have been plundering this enormous and rich (in terms of natural resources) part of Africa, staging military coups and supporting/aiding some of the most appalling militias in the world, including forces of former Congolese Tutsi army General – Laurent Nkunda – who later became one of the most brutal warlords in Africa, as well as the notorious militiaM23, led by General Bosco Ntaganda, former commander of the CNDP and the FARDC.

Pro-Rwandan and pro-Ugandan proxy militias have been periodically clashing, sometimes changing allegiances, or even going on their own. The mass slaughter of civilians, was regularly accompanied by mass rape, like that in the city of Bukavu.

The West and particularly the US and UK, have been firmly supportive of the regimes in both Rwanda and Uganda.

In my film, several personalities ranging from the former Congolese Presidential candidate Ben Kalala, to one of the leading African affairs analyst from Ghana, NiiAkuetteh, as well as Prof. Masako Yonekawa, former UNHCR Head of Field Office in Goma, confirmed that the Western governments and companies have great economic interests in DR Congo. And that both Rwanda and Uganda, have been utilized in plundering the neighboring country on their behalf.

While the Western mass media has on most occasions remained ‘disciplined’, and silent about the background of the conflict in DR Congo, the UN has managed to publish two damning reports. The first one was called “UN Mapping Report” published by HCHR in June 2010. Amongst other things it boldly states:

The intention to destroy a group in part is sufficient to constitute a crime of genocide and the international courts have confirmed that the destruction of a group can be limited to a particular geographical area.28 It is therefore possible to assert that, even if only a part of the Hutu population in Zaire was targeted and destroyed, it could nonetheless constitute a crime of genocide if this was the intention of the perpetrators. Several incidents listed in this report point to circumstances and facts from which a court could infer the intention to destroy the Hutu ethnic group in the DRC in part, if these were established beyond all reasonable doubt.

The scale of the crimes and the large number of victims, probably several tens of thousands, all nationalities combined, are illustrated by the numerous incidents listed in the report (104 in all). The extensive use of edged weapons (primarily hammers) and the systematic massacres of survivors after the camps had been taken show that the numerous deaths cannot be attributed to the hazards of war or seen as equating to collateral damage.30 The majority of the victims were children, women, elderly people and the sick, who were often undernourished and posed no threat to the attacking forces.31 Numerous serious attacks on the physical or mental integrity of members of the group were also committed, with a very high number of Hutus shot, raped, burnt or beaten.

The second, the most recent report released in June 2012, is called “Addendum to the interim report of the Group of Experts on the Democratic Republic of the Congo (S/2012/348)” concerning violations of the arms embargo and sanctions regime by the Government of Rwanda. It reads:

Since the outset of its current mandate, the Group has gathered evidence of arms embargo and sanctions regime violations committed by the Rwandan Government. These violations consist of the provision of material and financial support to armed groups operating in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the recently established M23, in contravention of paragraph 1 of Security Council resolution 1807 (2008).

The arms embargo and sanctions regimes violations include the following:

• Direct assistance in the creation of M23 through the transport of weapons and soldiers through Rwandan territory

• Recruitment of Rwandan youth and demobilized ex-combatants as well as Congolese refugees for M23

• Provision of weapons and ammunition to M23

• Mobilization and lobbying of Congolese political and financial leaders for the benefit of M23

• Direct Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) interventions into Congolese territory to reinforce M23

• Support to several other armed groups as well as Forces armées de la Républiquedémocratique du Congo (FARDC) mutinies in the eastern Congo

• Violation of the assets freeze and travel ban through supporting sanctioned individuals.

This latest report hit so hard, that even the closes allies of Rwanda – the US and UK – felt obliged to issue warnings and threats, that the military aid could be withdrawn from Kigali.

I took my last trip to Rwanda in July 2012. The atmosphere in the country did not feel good. All types of military groups were controlling Kigali, from the notorious Presidential Guards to the regular military, police and all sorts of paramilitary guards.

I had to collect the latest footage for my film, and I was once again ready to risk everything, and once again traveling to the extremes of the country. It helped that my driver (I used to drive my own car from Nairobi, Kenya, but such an approach was becoming increasingly dangerous) was Tutsi, but it helped only to some extent.

The fear could be felt everywhere. The street near my hotel was blocked by heavy barricades. It was one of the access roads to the Presidential mansion. There were metal detector checks, even into the Genocide Memorial in Kigali.

I saw potential recruits for the Congolese M23, near the Rwandan city of Musanze, in deep discussion with uniformed Rwandan soldiers.

I was arrested in Goma, right at the old border crossing. Of course I filmed and the Congolese guard spotted me – he emerged, enormous like a mountain – grabbing my hand and pulling me back to his country for interrogation. That prospect truly terrified me, having spent endless hours in the bunker, of Congolese intelligence two years earlier, when all my possessions gradually began to disappear into the deep pockets of my interrogators. Only my numerous ID’s, most likely saved me from the worst.

I shouted to the Rwandese soldiers, who came – two of them – grabbed my other arm and began pulling me towards Rwanda, obviously eager to avoid an international scandal.

I immediately instructed my driver to approach the second border. We crossed, illegally, as I was filming, going back and forth.

The insanity of the last days of filming…

There was a refugee camp near Gisenyi, just a few months ago empty, now overflowing with the refugees. There were UNHCR insignias on the tents; there were UNHCR trucks, as well as countless aggressive guards. There were thousands of ‘repatriated’ Rwandan refugees and the refugees escaping from the fighting in Kivu.

What I had observed in Uganda, Rwanda and DR Congo, the population of this part of Africa was once again on the move.

Rwanda, the Prussian-style militaristic client state of the West was in a dismal condition – skyscrapers and clean streets in the center of the capital, but absolute misery off the main roads in the countryside, with the electrification in single digit –in a stark contrast to what the politicians like Tony Blair (one advisors to Paul Kagame), want the world to believe.

There was discontent, oppression and fear in all corners of the nation. Grenades were going off, the main opposition leader Victoire Ingabire had, had her head shaved and was in prison. Kagame was acting increasingly like some manic mass murder, striking at the dissent, and even at his former cohorts, with increasing desperation.

“Kagame believes that it is ok to kill anybody he dislikes. He kills Hutus, he kills Tutsis, and there are all those crimes that are piling upon him. He seems not to care. I think he has reached the point of no return…”, Dr. Theogene Rudesingwa explained on my film , a former Chief of Staff of RPF and Ambassador to the US in 1995-1999, and in the past, one of the closest allies of Paul Kagame.

Another member of what used to be known as the “Gang of Four” in the RPF hierarchy, Dr. Gerald Gashima (former Prosecutor General in 1999-2003), talks on the film about disappearances and extra judicial killings, claiming, that now Kagame is “above the law; in Rwanda he is what is law…”

The accusations are mounting, but there seems to be no determined pressure from the West to call for free elections (RPF keeps winning elections by either liquidating or intimidating the opposition members), let alone to stop the genocide in DR Congo.

It took around 3 years to make the film – “Rwandan Gambit”. I had to risk my life repeatedly, driving all over the country, filming despite clear restrictions and prohibitions.

I had to talk to hundreds of people on five continents. My editor and I could hardly count on any substantial financial support. The film proved to be a monster, and a financially ruinous one. It has exhausted me financially, emotionally and intellectually.

We were addressing, unveiling the roots of the worst genocide since the WWII; presenting it to the public all over the world that, had almost no knowledge about the occurrences in the Great Lake region.

We felt under pressure to finish the film and to finish it as soon as possible.

“6 million people!“ shouted Congolese Presidential candidate, Ben Kalala, to our camera. “6 million innocent men, women and children. What is the world waiting for?”

Some now say 10 million. It is an unimaginable number. I covered Chile, and the horrors of the Pinochet era. There, 3-4 thousand people died. In Indonesia, during the US-sponsored military coup of 1965, between 800.000 and 3 million people vanished. The Great Lakes genocide was the worst topic I have ever had to cover, and the most complex, too.

One had to look at the colonialism and then move to the Cold War, one had to revisit the IMF practices and then the direct support of the West to potentially murderous but loyal regimes. One had to study the circumstances of the assassination of Lumumba and then to understand how, a few decades later, Paul Kagame was brought to power.

And now the film is finished. But the slaughter in Congo goes on. I only hope that our work of three years could trigger an outcry, and help to stop the genocide.


Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His book on Western imperialism in the South Pacific – Oceania – is published by Lulu . His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear” and will be released by Pluto Publishing House in August 2012. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zcommunications.org/the-most ... re-vltchek

[American Dream]

"Maria Landó" - Susana Baca



Dawn breaks shattering like a statue
Like a statue of wings that scatter throughout the city
And noon sings like a bell made of water
A bell made of golden water that keeps us from loneliness
And the night lifts its tall goblet
Its tall, tall goblet, early moon over the sea

But for Maria there is no dawn
But for Maria there is no midday
But for Maria there is no moon
Lifting its red goblet over the waters

Maria has no time to lift her eyes
Maria to lift her eyes, broken by lack of sleep
Maria broken by lack of sleep from so much suffering
Maria from so much suffering, all she does is work

Maria just works and works
Maria only works
And her work enriches others...

[American Dream]

The major critique of liberalism is that it constructs an image of society as fair and egalitarian where individuals rise and fall based on their own merits. Liberalism presents society as a meritocracy where individual actors compete on a level playing field. Liberalism sees inequality as a natural product of fair competition. Liberalism refuses to examine the structural causes of inequality (such as capitalism, racism, and patriarchy) that CRT scholars highlight. Liberalism’s emphasis on individual rights precludes any consideration of special protections under the law for minority groups. In fact, liberalism rejects any consideration of the structural rather than natural or individual causes of inequality because it might lead to the transformation of unequal power relations (Daniels 2008), a prospect feared by those in power. Ultimately, the liberal perspective fails to consider the multiple power relationships that give some individuals much greater advantage over others, and that allow some people to be freer than others.


From the very beginning, liberal societies were constructed along the status lines of class, race, gender, and citizenship. In America, Blacks and indigenous people were denied even the most basic human rights. Women were relegated to second class status and denied the rights of citizenship. Birthrights, not human rights, protected only those privileged enough to be born white, landowning males. As a society, we have never practiced justice and liberty for all. Liberal societies use the slogans of equality to benefit an exclusive, privileged group. And while over the years liberal societies have extended legal and political rights to a greater number of people, they have never addressed the fundamental material inequality passed down through generations of modern capitalist development. From the very beginning, then, the ideal of equality in the abstract has been celebrated within a broader context of concrete inequality.

--Zamudio et al., Critical Race Theory Matters: Education and Ideology