Your comments are obtuse. Why don’t you come out with some actual criticisms? If you have a problem with a fact or facts, state it or them. Otherwise your comments only suggest how little you actually understand and how arrogantly you (think you) do so. Further, why don’t you situate your self — what do you know about Kagame’s “elected” parliament? Do you work in RWanda? With some profit-based “NGO”? Spell out your own interests, or make it clear whose information you are regurgitating.

keith harmon snow

Surely genocide is worthy of more than a pathetic slanging match.

This is about as substantive (and professional)as a British Red top!

I so like how many women Kagame works with in the elected parliament. A new kind of dictatorship, one supposes…

Also, Mr. Reynders, thank you for your expressed interest in being open-minded. I hope you will follow through, without any interests getting in your way, and get to the truth on your own.

You would be wiser next time not to begin your inquiry so obstreperously. My own lack o wisdom is noted.

blessings
keith

I’m happy to do my best to answer any questions that are reasonable.

blessings
keith

By

btw you can e-mail your reply. Would like to read it with good cup of coffee.

MAy I ask you if you are a racist, because by implying that especially my visit to rwanda further underscore your original reply, I can t really see the metaphore in that line.

Informe me please

You will forgive my bad rhetorical skills, but at least I identify myself, and while I made a post at 6:01 regarding the original complaints — Mr. Reynders, instead of dealing with my reply, you want question my sexuality.

I did not question or reference your sexuality, I merely asked if you live in a bubble cubicle — because you so casually ask an ICTR defense lawyer to send you “all the documents from the ICTR cases” etc etc as you did.

So, yes, I am disappointed to find that you have been to Africa, especially Rwanda, and that reality only further underscores my original reply — which as far as I can see has not been posted — that:

“Mr. Berg and Mr. Reynders employ self righteous assumptions that operate from a point of departure that says “WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AND DON”T NEED TO EXAMINE OUR THINKING” and thereby they become both genocide exclusivists — that the Hutus committed a genocide and the Tutsis suffered from it — and genocide deniers — that the Hutus are not suffering a genocide.”

You will forgive my bad rhetorical skills, but at least I identify myself, and while I made a post at 6:01 regarding the original complaints — Mr. Berg and Mr. Reynders employ self righteous assumptions that operate from a point of departure that says “WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AND DON”T NEED TO EXAMINE OUR THINKING” and thereby they become both genocide exclusivists — that the Hutus committed a genocide and the Tutsis suffered from it — and genocide deniers — that the Hutus are not suffering a genocide.

To be faire I think you have a rather quite elaborate vocabulary and definately posses rethorical skills. It is just a shame you use them so bad.

For the clarity and maybe to prove you that probalities aren’t facts.

I had the pleasure of living fourtien years off my life on the African continent. I am born in Goma from an arabian congolese father and a rwandan mother. Maybe even as much as Kambale I am worried about my family there with wich I have lost all contacts since the upheavel off violence.

I have lived in country’s as Ivory Coast, Cameroen and Congo. Last summer I passed an incredible summer in Rwanda in wich I have learned to particulary admire the rwandese in their perseverence off bulding up together not as a Hutu or a Tutsi but as rwandese a worthy futur.

As a member of both communities the geopolitical situation of the region has always interrested me, I consider myself not as in expert but as a rather loyal observer of the developments in the region.

I hope you are not dissapointed.

Thank you first of all for your well manered response.

My point of view hasn’t change, this is an oppen discussion and I am interrested in the fundaments of your case. Altought I have the sincerity to tell you openly that I am a sympathisant of the actual Rwandese governement and also of the president Paul Kagame. I hope you wont feel disturbed by this announcement and will honor me in sending these documents.

Best Regards,

Paul Reynders

For your information I don t live in the red district and to be fair about it I wouldn’t mind if I have to. The red district is an achievement this country can be proud off.

But common you can be fair about it didn t this didn’t you get in, you seem to have a pretty good description for someone just passing by. :P

another one this time, how strange the NY something our dear Ann Garrison should know pretty well then. I assume this because you said you read everything about the Mai Mai

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/world/africa/21congo.html

This one goes about the kidnaping of some repporter by who ???
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29206

You do not back down from what? From falsehood and US and UK and RPF propaganda? Strange. Well, I cannot retreat from the facts. I can send you the transcripts of the Military II trial which involves the chiefs of staff of the Rwandan Army and the Rwandan Gendarmerie (national police) on a flashdisk only as that trial has lasted over four years, with hundreds of witnesses. If you can send me your postal address to me privately I will send to you. If you would like something more immediate I can send you the transcripts of the evidence of Antoine Nyetera, a Tutsi prince, son of the last king, who was in Kigali all through the April-July period of the final RPF offensive. His testimony will confirm everything I said. I have that on my email system and can send in a couple of days. Your choice. Thanks for keeping an open mind and being willing to examine the facts as opposed to the propaganda.

Christopher Black

I don’t mean to sound harsh, but that request is classic! A perfect example of obliviousness and white privilege could not hardy be invented.

Mr. Reynders, I was recently in Amsterdam and I was amused by the women I saw as I walked down the street, the red light district, who stand naked and enticingly in the bubble cubicles. Do you live in one of these?

keith harmon snow

Its interesting to me that Mr. Reynders — self-described as a law student from Amsterdam — purports to know so much about the Mai Mai factions from the Congo.

The above assertion about the MAI MAI being “a xenophobic militia” is rather telling. It is, first, inherently racist — like most everything you will read about the Mai Mai in Western so-called “news” venues, as Ann Garrison so aptly points out — because such a description is proffered by a law student from Amsterdam who has probably never set foot in Africa, but, certainly not in Congo, but, no matter, has absolutely no idea what he is talking about.

I spent four years in and out of the DRC, I have met the top Mai Mai commander, General Padiri, in person, in his private office, where we held private discussions, and I would not venture such hubris (as above) to think I understand the Mai Mai.

Further, readers will note that I hold Mai Mai to task in my story preceeding this thread, but it is not the Mai Mai who are so much the problem — in the particular geographic region I address — as it is the Jane Goodall Institute and Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund who are funding and directing the local militias to — once again — clear the land and commit atrocities, including extortion and racketeering, in another form of Lebensraumpolitik: gorilla conservation.

Now, Mr. Reynders — please give out the web site and phone number of this newspaper so that more people can read and — hopefully — recognize (a.k.a. RE-COGNIZE) the truth.

keith harmon snow

I’d like you to send me all the transcripts of the trial of the Rwanda war crimes tribunal, very curious on how you came to that conclusion and I am surprised to see how this will open my eyes like you assume they will.

I will make some time free and we will debate the facts.

Paul Reynders
reynderspaul@live.nl

Mr. Bergs silence is inconsequential, as is his completely erroneous portrait of “genocide” in Rwanda. His statement above is, verbatim, the basic structural framework established by the propaganda system. It is completely wrong.

It is symptomatic of his circuitous argument to report in the same breath that the “genocide did not begin in 1990″ and it was a “civil war.” If it was a civil war, then the entire genocide argument falls apart.

In fact, it has anyways. The ICTR last week ruled that there was NO CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT GENOCIDE by the highest ranking (surviving) officials of the former Rwandan government army (ex-FAR).

No lists. No orchestrated, planned, extermination by the Hutus.

On the other hand, we have the orchestrated genocidal campaign by the Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army.

The invasion of Rwanda in 1990 was a well-planned military operation in violation of the international laws protecting the sovereign government of Rwanda under President Juvenal Habyarimana.

The invading troops were almost exclusively Ugandan citizens, and most were active Uganda People’s Defense Forces (UPDF) soldiers. They were not “Rwandans” (though there were some Rwandans who joined the UPDF ranks in Uganda). Kagame was a Ugandan citizen; former director of military intelligence for Museveni, and dreaded as for his status as butcher — a status that followed him into Rwanda.

From the very beginning the so-called Rwanda Patriotic Front/Army committed egregious acts of genocide against Hutus. Their entire program was well-orchestrated, and they often killed everyone in their path who didn’t flee. From northern Rwanda in 1990 through Kigali in 1994 and onto absolute butchery — read: GENOCIDE — in Zaire.

From 1990 to the present day, Kagame and his generals like James Kabarebe have pursued a campaign of Lebesraumpolitik — the scorched earth conquest of vast areas of Rwanda for resettlement by “Tutsi exiles” or, a.k.a. Ugandans — against Hutus.

Thus the only PLANNED and COORDINATED genocide that occurred in Rwanda was committed by the Paul Kagame’s Rwandan Patriotic Army, and it followed in Zaire.

On December 16, former Clinton Official Herman Cohen acknowledged in the New York Times that the RPA committed genocide against the Hutus in the Congo. That is a very rare but telling admission.

The numbers cited above by Mr. Berg are wrong: they are basic, unsubstantiated propaganda regurgitated ad nauseum as fact.

Some of the most definitive research on the pre-1994 demographics of people and ethnicities in Rwanda were completed by the GenoDynamics project.
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/davenport/genodynamics/

Mr. Berg writes: “I think you also suggest that Washington was backing the RPF’s activities. If that were true then why didn’t the U.S. intervene to stop the genocide?”

What kind of thinking is this? Its the kind of thinking of the typical white man (or woman) whose brains have been scrambled by the massive propaganda on “genocide” in Rwanda. The US didn’t “intervene to stop the genocide” because it was, as Mr. Berg points out, a civil war, and the US wanted its proxy to win, and it did, and the only “genocide” that was committed was committed by the Kagame military machine.

Obviously, acts of genocide were committed by Hutus, but the framework is entrely misunderstood and mischaracterized to achieve the kind of upside-down mass psychology that exists today and is exemplified by popular “consciousness” that is exemplified — with no shortage of misplaced “outrage” — by Mr. Berg and Mr. Reynders.

Mr. Berg and Mr. Reynders employ self righteous assumptions that operate from a point of departure that says “WE KNOW WHAT HAPPENED AND DON”T NEED TO EXAMINE OUR THINKING” and thereby they become both genocide exclusivists — that the Hutus committed a genocide and the Tutsis suffered from it — and genocide deniers — that the Hutus are not suffering a genocide.

Though they certainly are not unique in their erroneous position, such white supremacy and intellectual and moral sloth does not exclude them from culpability. It does not exclude any of us.

Perhaps the most insidious is the idea that Rwanda has “improved” under the Kagame regime post 1994. This is used to absolve the RPF and their western backers and partners — noted herein — of the guilt for what they are doing now.

As Ward Churchill (A LITTLE MATTER OF GENOCIDE) makes clear in his examples of genocide denial and exclusivism practiced by Jews and Germans, “Bad as things are, they could always be worse” — indeed they were under nazism.

That is a corollary to the proposition that “Rwanda has improved” from the days of “genocide” ostensibly perpetrated by Hutus. But it ignores the ongoing campaign of Lebesraumpolitik.

This statement by Mr. Berg — “In fact, his [Kagame's] government has been incredibly conciliatory towards all Rwandans: Hutu, Tutsi, and ‘Twa.” — is nothing short of an apology for mass murder.

Obliviousness is an active choice, but it does not excuse anyone. In fact it is a pivotal underpinning force in the ongoing mass psychology of fascism and the contemporary denial (by so-called Western civilization and its “civilized” peoples) of genocides past and present. It’s like saying the Jews suffered, and never mentioning the gypises, Poles or slavs… or Cherokee, Penan, Ijaw, Anuak, Hutu, Powhatans…

blessings
keith