Tag Archives: Human Rights Watch

Hillary Clinton, US/NATO Imperialism, & the Lynching of Gaddafi

03 Thu Mar 2016

Posted by in Africa, Anti-Imperialism, Libya, Presidential Election 2016

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NATO vs LybiaLUMPENPROLETARIAT—The New York Times has decided to take us all on a trip down memory lane by revisiting the imperialist resumé of Democrat Party presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton with the publication of a major two-part exposé entitled “The Libya Gamble” on Hillary Clinton’s role in the overthrow of the Libyan government in 2011, as Obama’s Secretary of State.  We can imagine the nightmarish wrath a President Hillary would unleash on the world.

One thing we can be wary of is the hawkish lengths an aspiring first female president, such as Hillary Clinton, would go within the realm of patriarchy to prove she’s as tough as her male counterparts.  Think Margaret Thatcher on steroids.

By this metric, the American ruling class, particularly oil profiteers, must be pleased with Hillary Clinton’s record as Secretary of State when she provided President Obama the excuse he needed to destabalise Libya and create further pretext for endless US/NATO military predation everywhere, except inside the territories of its corrupt allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia.

As The New York Times‘ Pulitzer Prize-winning Jo Becker explained, “when Colonel Gaddafi threatened to crush the Arab Spring protests in Libya, she helped persuade President Obama to join other countries in bombing his forces to prevent a feared massacre.”  Of course, the hypocrisy in this reasoning is blatant, for we recall that the Obama administration literally cracked skulls in the USA, as it crushed the Occupy Movement across the nation, even as it purported to defend the right to assemble and to petition one’s government for a redress of grievances abroad.

During the Democrat Party’s presidential debate in New Hampshire last year, moderator, and ABC News host, Martha Raddatz questioned Hillary Clinton about the vicious conquest of Libya.  Clinton’s main competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination and self-described socialist, Bernie Sanders, added this somewhat qualified stance on regime change, or US/NATO imperialism:

“The truth is, it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator, but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator. So, I think Secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement: I’m not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.”

Messina

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DEMOCRACY NOW!—[3 MAR 2016] The New York Times has published a major two-part exposé titled “The Libya Gamble” on how then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed President Obama to begin bombing Libya five years ago this month. Today, Libya is a failed state and a haven for terrorists. How much should Hillary Clinton be blamed for the crisis? We speak to journalist Scott Shane of The New York Times.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript [by Democracy Now!]. Copy may not be in its final form.  [Accessed 3 MAR 2016  10:37 PDT]

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Five years ago this month, the United States and allied nations began bombing Libya, striking forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The Obama administration said the strikes were needed to enforce a no-fly zone and to protect Libyan protesters who took to the streets as part of the Arab Spring. Inside the Obama administration, there was a deep division over whether the U.S. should intervene militarily. One of the most hawkish members of Obama’s Cabinet was Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state.

The New York Times has just published two major pieces [part one, part two] looking at Clinton’s role pushing for the bombing of Libya. The special report is titled “The Libya Gamble.” In a moment, we’ll be joined by Scott Shane, one of the report’s co-authors, but first a video package produced by The New York Times.

JO BECKER: Hillary Clinton’s role in the military intervention that ousted Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is getting new scrutiny as she runs for president. The U.S. relationship with Libya has long been complicated. Colonel Gaddafi, who ruled from 1969 until 2011, was an eccentric dictator linked to terrorism. Still, when he gave up his nuclear program a decade ago and provided information about al-Qaeda, he became an ally of sorts. In 2009, when Mrs. Clinton was secretary of state, she welcomed one of Colonel Gaddafi’s sons to Washington.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: We deeply value the relationship between the United States and Libya.

JO BECKER: But two years later, when Colonel Gaddafi threatened to crush the Arab Spring protests in Libya, she helped persuade President Obama to join other countries in bombing his forces to prevent a feared massacre.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: This operation has already saved many lives, but the danger is far from over.

JO BECKER: The military campaign ended up ousting Colonel Gaddafi, and Secretary Clinton was welcomed to Libya on a victory tour. A few days later, Colonel Gaddafi was killed by opposition fighters.

SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: We came, we saw, he died.

JO BECKER: But the new Western-backed government proved incapable of uniting Libya. And in the end, the strongman’s death led to chaos. When four Americans were killed by terrorists in Benghazi in 2012, it revealed just how bad things had gotten. Colonel Gaddafi’s huge arsenal of weapons has shown up in the hands of terrorists in places like Gaza, Syria, Nigeria and Mali. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have fled through Libya on boats. Many have drowned. And the power vacuum has allowed ISIS to build its most dangerous outpost on the Libyan coast. Today, just 300 miles from Europe, Libya is a failed state. Meanwhile, back at home, Mrs. Clinton has struggled to defend the decision to intervene.

HILLARY CLINTON: But I’m not giving up on Libya, and I don’t think anybody should. We’ve been at this a couple of years.

MARTHA RADDATZ: But were mistakes made?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, there’s always a retrospective to say what mistakes were made. But I know that we offered a lot of help, and I know it was difficult for the Libyans to accept help.

AMY GOODMAN: That video by The New York Times accompanies a major two-part series [part one, part two] on Hillary Clinton titled “The Libya Gamble,” written by Jo Becker and Scott Shane. Scott Shane is joining us now from Baltimore. He’s also author of a new book called Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone, about the first American deliberately killed in a drone strike, Anwar al-Awlaki. The book just won the 2016 Lionel Gelber Prize.

Scott Shane, welcome to Democracy Now! Let’s start with this two-part series, “Clinton, ‘Smart Power’ and a Dictator’s Fall.” Talk about Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and how she led the charge, or what she advised President Obama in Libya.

SCOTT SHANE: Well, five years ago, there were—there was a question about what to do as Gaddafi’s forces approached Benghazi. The Europeans and the Arab League were calling for action. No one really knew what the outcome would be, but there was certainly a very serious threat to a large number of civilians in Benghazi. But, you know, the U.S. was still involved in two big wars, and the sort of heavyweights in the Obama administration were against getting involved—Robert Gates, the defensive secretary; Joe Biden, the vice president; Tom Donilon, the national security adviser.

And Secretary Clinton had been meeting with representatives of Britain, France and the Arab countries. And she sort of essentially called in from Paris and then from Cairo, and she ended up tipping the balance and essentially convincing President Obama, who later described this as a 51-49 decision, to join the other countries in the coalition to bomb Gaddafi’s forces.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Hillary Clinton has argued, in her defense, that it’s still too early to tell what the effects of the intervention have been, and that perhaps accounts for why she’s pushing for more military involvement in Syria. But Obama, on the other hand, as you point out in your piece, says the Libya experience has made him question each military intervention by asking, “Should we intervene militarily? Do we have an answer for the day after?” So, Scott Shane, can you lay out what you explain happened in Libya the day after, as it were?

SCOTT SHANE: Well, you know, for a few months, it looked like things might go reasonably well. There was some attention to restoring Libya’s oil industry. And the optimism was based in part on the idea that this is a relatively small country population-wise, about 6 million people. It did not have the Sunni-Shia split that you see in many Muslim countries, and it had plenty of money from oil to rebuild. So, briefly, there was this sort of moment of optimism. And Secretary Clinton made her visit. And they were—you know, her people were actually thinking this would be perhaps a centerpiece of her record as secretary of state.

But what happened was the militias that had participated in the fight against Gaddafi, you know, essentially aligned with different tribes in different cities, and it proved impossible for these mostly Western-educated—in some cases, somewhat detached—opposition leaders to pull the country together, and eventually it sort of dissolved into civil war.

AMY GOODMAN: You say—in that piece we just heard, the tape that caught Hillary Clinton saying, “We came, we saw, he died.” Explain.

SCOTT SHANE: Well, you know, in some ways, I think she would see that as unfair. She was giving a series of TV interviews, and that was in a break between interviews. The reporter for the next take was just sitting down in the chair, and an aide handed her a Blackberry with the news that Gaddafi—you know, first reports that Gaddafi might be dead. And that was her sort of, I think she would say, you know, exaggerated, humorous reaction. But, you know—but it did capture, I think, the fact that she had become very involved in this effort that first—that sort of began as protecting civilians and sort of evolved into overthrowing Gaddafi. And she was eager to see an end to what had become a surprisingly drawn-out affair, given the fact that this very large alliance of NATO and Arab countries were on the rebels’ side. So I think she was relieved and pleased that Gaddafi’s rule was over and that he was no longer around to make trouble.

AMY GOODMAN: During the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire last year, ABC News host Martha Raddatz questioned Hillary Clinton about her support for the 2011 invasion of Libya, which toppled Muammar Gaddafi.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Secretary Clinton, I want to circle back to something that your opponents here have brought up. Libya is falling apart. The country is a haven for ISIS and jihadists, with an estimated 2,000 ISIS fighters there today. You advocated for that 2011 intervention and called it “smart power at its best.” And yet, even President Obama said the U.S. should have done more to fill the leadership vacuum left behind. How much responsibility do you bear for the chaos that followed elections?

HILLARY CLINTON: Well, first, let’s remember why we became part of a coalition to stop Gaddafi from committing massacres against his people. The United States was asked to support the Europeans and the Arab partners that we had. And we did a lot of due diligence about whether we should or not, and eventually, yes, I recommended, and the president decided, that we would support the action to protect civilians on the ground. And that led to the overthrow of Gaddafi.

I think that what Libya then did by having a full free election, which elected moderates, was an indication of their crying need and desire to get on the right path. Now, the whole region has been rendered unstable, in part because of the aftermath of the Arab Spring, in part because of the very effective outreach and propagandizing that ISIS and other terrorist groups do.

MARTHA RADDATZ: Senator Sanders?

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS: The truth is, it is relatively easy for a powerful nation like America to overthrow a dictator, but it is very hard to predict the unintended consequences and the turmoil and the instability that follows after you overthrow that dictator. So, I think Secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement: I’m not quite the fan of regime change that I believe she is.

AMY GOODMAN: “I’m not quite the fan of regime change that … she is,” says Bernie Sanders in that debate with Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Scott Shane, from Iraq and her vote for the war with Iraq, which of course did lead to regime change, to Libya, talk about the goal of Hillary Clinton and whether that was even different from the goal of President Obama, who she does wrap herself around now in all of her presidential campaigning.

SCOTT SHANE: I think what we found is that there is a subtle but distinct difference between President Obama and Secretary Clinton on the question of sort of activism and interventionism abroad. And, you know, in a situation like Libya, there are no good choices. It’s certainly conceivable that if she had tipped the other way, and the U.S. and the Europeans and others had not gotten involved, that perhaps Gaddafi would have slaughtered a whole lot of civilians, and we would be, you know, posing different questions to her today.

But, you know, what we found was that President Obama is, not surprisingly, very shaped by the Iraq experience, which he’s had to cope with the still ongoing aftermath of the decision to invade in 2003 all these years later. She, of course, has been in government longer, and I think she—you know, her aides say that she was also influenced by genocide in Rwanda, which taught her the cost of inaction in a situation like that, and by the experience in the Balkans, which sort of cut both ways. But, you know, I think she drew the lesson that intervention could prevent even larger massacres and do some good, as imperfect as the outcome was there. So they kind of look back to these different historical experiences and draw different conclusions.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you report in your piece in the Times that shortly after the air campaign began in 2011, there was the possibility of a 72-hour ceasefire, potentially leading to a negotiated exit for Gaddafi. Why was that offer not taken seriously by the American military?

SCOTT SHANE: Well, you know, there were—there was a whole array of attempts to come up with some sort of soft exit for Gaddafi. Perhaps he would stay in Libya, perhaps he would go elsewhere. But I think the bottom line was that the Americans and the Europeans and the other Arab—and the Arab countries that were involved in this, all basically felt that Gaddafi, who was basically a megalomaniac, who had been in office for 40 years and sort of saw him as the savior of his country, just would not, when push came to shove, be willing to cede power. And they felt that any kind of ceasefire, he would use just to kind of regroup his forces and extend the fighting. Whether that was true or not, you know, history will judge.

AMY GOODMAN: And the issue of this being a failed state right now and Hillary Clinton’s responsibility here—of course, as is President Obama, but she was the secretary of state who was advising him, meeting with people on the ground, making her suggestions on pushing forward with war?

SCOTT SHANE: Yeah, I mean, you know, one reason we did that series is that it appears that intervention—when, how and whether to intervene in other countries, particularly Muslim countries—remains sort of a pressing question for American presidents. And since she’s running for the presidency, this is, you know, perhaps a revealing case study of how she comes out in these situations.

But, you know, there are—there is no good example of intervention or non-intervention in these countries since the Arab Spring and before that. I mean, you have Iraq, where we spent years occupying, a very tragic outcome. You have Libya, where we intervened but did not occupy and pretty much, you know, stayed out of it afterwards—not a good outcome. And you have Syria, where we have really not intervened, have not occupied, and you’ve had this terrible civil war with huge casualties. So, you know, some people in Washington are questioning whether there is any right answer in these extremely complicated countries in the Middle East.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, given the spread of ISIS in Libya, you report that some of Obama’s top national security aides are now pushing for a second American military intervention in Libya.

SCOTT SHANE: Yeah, I mean, one of the ironies here is that, you know, you’ve almost come full circle, but instead of targeting Gaddafi and Gaddafi’s forces, the U.S. is now targeting ISIS. And the—you know, in that debate, Martha Raddatz uses the number 2,000 ISIS fighters; now it’s up to 5,000 or 6,000. You know, on the coast of Libya, they have formed the most important outpost for the Islamic State outside Syria and Iraq, and the Europeans and the Americans are very worried about it. So, there was actually an airstrike on an ISIS camp in western Libya, where there were Tunisians responsible for some attacks in Tunisia, and now they’re looking at possible attacks on the major ISIS stronghold in Libya, which is in Sirte on the coast.

AMY GOODMAN: In your piece, you talk about the memo afterwards that highlights Hillary Rodham Clinton—HRC, as it’s put—role, talking about her leadership, ownership, stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish, with an eye to the presidential campaign. Can you talk about this, as you put it, this brag sheet?

SCOTT SHANE: Well, that memo was written in 2011, when Gaddafi had fallen. And, you know, it looked like—you know, they were holding this up as sort of an alternative to the George W. Bush invasion of Iraq, a coalition in which the U.S. was not even the leader and organizer, really, and it was a very broad coalition of nations that had intervened. They saw this as what she referred to as “smart power.” And they really thought this might be something they would hold up as a very successful part of her record as she ran for president. As we’ve seen, that did not happen, and, you know, you don’t hear them raise the subject of Libya on the campaign trail at all.

AMY GOODMAN: Scott Shane, we have to end the show, but we’re going to do Part 2 of our conversation after the show about your new book, Objective Troy: A Terrorist, a President, and the Rise of the Drone. Scott Shane, national security reporter for The New York Times. And we’ll link to this major exposé [part one, part two] you did on Hillary Clinton’s role in “The Libya Gamble.”

That does it for the show. We have this late, breaking news: Honduras—the Honduran indigenous and environmental organizer Berta Cáceres has been assassinated. She was one of the leading organizers for indigenous land rights in Honduras, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

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GLOBAL RESEARCH—[12 MAR 2015]  Libya, ISIS and the Unaffordable Luxury of Hindsight

Who are you?” the late Muammar Gaddafi once rhetorically asked in a famous speech of his towards the end of his reign; (rightly) questioning the legitimacy of those seeking to over-throw his government at the time, calling them extremists, foreign agents, rats and drug-addicts. He was laughed at, unfairly caricatured, ridiculed and incessantly demonized; a distasteful parody video poking fun at the late Libyan leader even went viral on social media; evidently the maker of the video, an Israeli, thought the Libyan colloquial Arabic word “Zenga” (which means an Alleyway) sounded funny enough that he extracted it from one of Gaddafi’s speeches, looped it on top of a hip-hop backing track and voila… he got himself a hit video which was widely (and shamefully) circulated with a “revolutionary” zeal in the Arab world. We shared, we laughed, he died.

But the bloody joke is on all of us; Gaddafi knew what he was talking about; right from the get-go, he accused the so-called Libyan rebels of being influenced by Al-Qaeda ideology and Ben Laden’s school of thought; no one had taken his word for it of course, not even a little bit. I mean why should we have? After all, wasn’t he a vile, sex-centric dictator hell-bent on massacring half of the Libyan population while subjecting the other half to manic raping sprees with the aid of his trusted army of Viagra-gobbling, sub-Saharan mercenaries? At least that’s what we got from the visual cancer that is Al Jazeera channel and its even more acrid Saudi counterpart Al-Arabiya in their heavily skewed coverage of NATO’s vicious conquest of Libya. Plus Gaddafi did dress funny; why would anyone trust a haggard, weird-looking despot dressed in colorful rags when you have well-groomed Zionists like Bernard Henry Levy, John McCain and Hillary Clinton at your side, smiling and flashing the victory sign in group photo-ops, right?

Gaddafi called them drug-addicted, Islamic fundamentalists; we know them as ISIS… it doesn’t seem much of a joke now, does it? And ISIS is what had been in store for us all along; the “revolutionary” lynching and sodomization of Muammar Gaddafi amid manic chants of “Allahu Akbar”, lauded by many at the time as some sort of a warped triumph of the good of popular will (read: NATO-sponsored mob rule) over the evil of dictatorship (sovereign state), was nothing but a gory precursor for the future of the country and the region; mass lynching of entire populations in Libya, Syria and Iraq and the breakup of key Arab states into feuding mini-statelets. The gruesome video of Colonel Gaddafi’s murder, which puts to shame the majority of ISIS videos in terms of unhinged brutality and gore, did not invoke the merest of condemnations back then, on the contrary; everyone seemed perfectly fine with the grotesque end of the Libyan “tyrant”… except that it was only the beginning of a new and unprecedented reign of terror courtesy of NATO’s foot-soldiers and GCC-backed Islamic insurgents.

The rapid proliferation of trigger-happy terrorist groups and Jihadi factions drenched in petrodollars in Libya was not some sort of an intelligence failure on the part of western governments or a mere by-product of the power vacuum left by a slain Gaddafi; it was a deliberate, calculated policy sought after and implemented by NATO and its allies in the Gulf under the cringe-inducing moniker “Friends of Libya” (currently known as the International Coalition against ISIS) to turn the north-African country into the world’s largest ungovernable dumpster of weapons, al-Qaida militants and illegal oil trading.

So it is safe to say that UNSC resolution 1973, which practically gave free rein for NATO to bomb Libya into smithereens, has finally borne fruit… and it’s rotten to its nucleus, you can call the latest gruesome murder of 21 Egyptian fishermen and workers by the Libyan branch of the Islamic State exhibit “A”, not to mention of course the myriad of daily killings, bombings and mini-civil wars that are now dotting the entire country which, ever since the West engineered its coup-d’etat against the Gaddafi government, have become synonymous with the bleak landscape of lawlessness and death that is “Libya” today. And the gift of NATO liberation is sure to keep on giving for years of instability and chaos to come.

Learn more at GLOBAL RESEARCH.

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INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES—[17 OCT 2012] Colonel Gaddafi ‘killed by bayonet stab to the anus’

Colonel Muammar Gaddafi died after being stabbed with a bayonet in the anus and not in a firefight as originally claimed by Libyan authorities, according to a report on the dictator’s last hours.

New York-based Human Rights Watch said Gaddafi was already bleeding from head wounds caused by blast shrapnel as he tried to flee Sirte, his hometown. The charity obtained unedited mobile footage that showed militants abusing Gaddafi as they took him into custody in October 2011.

“As he was being led on to the main road, a militiaman stabbed him in his anus with what appears to have been a bayonet, causing another rapidly bleeding wound,” the report said.

Gaddafi’s naked and apparently lifeless body was shown on mobile footage being put into an ambulance and driven to Misrata in a convoy. Earlier, fighters from Benghazi had claimed to have shot Gaddafi dead during a row with fighters from Misrata.

Gaddafi, his son Mutassim, defence minister Abu-Bakr Younis and other followers were buried in a secret place in the desert to prevent his grave becoming a shrine. A total of 103 members of the convoy died in the firefight. Evidence collated by Human Rights Watch suggested that some of the men were summarily executed.

The son of Gaddafi’s defence minister, also called Younis, who was present at the scene of the dictator’s capture, told Human Rights Watch of the confrontation with the rebels while trying to escape from Sirte.

Two Nato missiles forced the group to leave the cars and escape on foot, seeking shelter in a drainage ditch. A bodyguard hurled grenades at approaching militants but one grenade “hit the concrete wall and bounced back to fall between Muammar Gaddafi and Abu Bakr Younis”, Younis junior said.

“The shrapnel hit my father and he fell down to the ground. Muammar Gaddafi was also injured by the grenade, on the left side of his head,” he said.

“Our findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Muammar Gaddafi was killed in crossfire, and not after his capture,” Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director at Human Rights Watch, said.

Learn more at INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES.

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Related Lumpenproletariat articles, regarding Hillary Clinton‘s 2015-2016 presidential campaign:

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[Last modified 21:59 PDT  6 MAR 2016]

[Image entitlted “Khaddafi In Bredda” by Flikr user FaceMePLS used via Creative Commons]

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Project Censored: Ann Garrison, Edward Herman, Rwandan Genocide, & Burundi

01 Fri Jan 2016

Posted by in Africa, Anti-Imperialism, Anti-War, Burundi, Political Economy, Rwanda

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ProjectCensoredLUMPENPROLETARIAT    Project Censored invited onto the free speech airwaves today one of our favourite experts on news and political analysis of Rwanda and the African Continent, independent journalist, Ann Garrison, a friend of Lumpenproletariat.org. [1]  Garrison discussed, with Professor Edward S. Herman, his book Enduring Lies, sussing out the actual history of the Rwandan Genocide in 1994, which includes the imperialistic nature of the role of the USA, the EU, and their anti-democratic allies on the African Continent. [2]  Garrison and Dr. Herman disabuse us of historical distortions promulgated by state propaganda, corporate/for-profit media, and misleading films, such as Hotel Rwanda.

Also, Ann Garrison covered recent flashpoints impacting Burundi, including the role of US officials, such as the USA’s UN Ambassador Samantha Power, in destabalising the African nation and undermining its national sovereignty, which would render it more vulnerable to western exploitation. [3]  Listen (or download an mp3) here.

Messina

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[Transcript of Project Censored broadcast by Messina for Lumpenproletariat.org]

PROJECT CENSORED—[1 JAN 2016] “Welcome to the Project Censored show on Pacifica Radio.  I’m Mickey Huff with Peter Phillips.  We wish you all a very happy New Year.

“Today, on the programme, we welcome guest host, independent journalist, Ann Garrison.  Ann Garrison will speak to University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus Edward Herman, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, The Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide and the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later.  They’ll discuss the gross distortions of what really happened in Rwanda, that have become a rallying cry to ‘stop the next Rwanda’.

“Ann Garrison also speaks to a Communication Adviser to the Burundian president about how that rallying cry is now deployed to advocate for invasion and regime change in Rwanda’s neighbour, Burundi.  Please stay with us.  (c. 1:23)  []

[music break:  “We Want” by Junkyard Empire]    (c. 1:55)

ANN GARRISON:  “Happy New Year; and welcome to the Project Censored show.  Thanks to Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff for inviting me, Ann Garrison, to host.

“Today, we’re going to talk about regime change engineered by the US government and its allies in east and central Africa.  We’re going to talk about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the 1990s, and Burundi, today, where we’re still hoping for a better outcome.

“Aerial bombing campaigns make US wars for regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria highly visible and absolutely undeniable.  But the corporate and state press don’t describe US-sponsored as such, if they talk about them at all.  Millions of African people have, nevertheless, lost their lives or seen their lives destroyed in US-sponsored wars for regime change and natural resources in Africa.

“For more than a year now, western policy makers and press have warned of a genocide in Burundi, like that of Rwanda in 1994, and called for a so-called humanitarian intervention to override Burundi’s national sovereignty and replace President Pierre Nkurunziza with a president more to their liking.  They tell us that they are campaigning to stop genocide and mass atrocities, or, often, for short, ‘to stop the next Rwanda’, quote-unquote, which is what they told us when we went to war in Libya and Syria.

“One of the founding documents of humanitarian interventionist ideology is our UN Ambassador Samantha Power‘s “Bystanders to Genocide“, an essay decrying America’s failure to stop the Rwandan genocide, which she expanded into her book, The Problem From Hell:  America and the Age of Genocide.

“Here with me to talk to me about this is University of Pennsylvania Emeritus Professor of Finance Edward S. Herman, co-author with Noam Chomsky of the classic Manufacturing Consent.  Herman is also author of The Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: Rwanda and the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later.

“Welcome, Professor Ed Herman.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “I’m happy to be with you.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay; Professor Herman, could you start by telling us why you described the enduring lies about what really happened in Rwanda as ‘the greatest success of the propaganda system in the past two decades’?”  (c. 4:40)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “In this book we described the fact that Paul Kagame, the leader of Rwanda, has killed more than five times as many people as Idi Amin.

“He invaded Rwanda in 1990 and carried out a war of conquest there, that ended some time in 1994.

“He invaded the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1996 and went in and out of that area for years, killing, what the UN, itself, admitted was probably more than four million people.

“He runs a dictatorship in Rwanda where he gets 93% of the vote in a country where 90% of the people are Hutu and who consider him to be a conqueror, a terrorist leader.  But he gets 93% of the vote.

“He’s considered, in the west, to be a hero, a savior.  In The New Yorker, he was described as the Abraham Lincoln of Africa.  For a man who has outdone Idi Amin, I think this is miraculous.  The only way we can explain it is that he serves the ends of the United States.  But it’s still a miracle that a man with that record can—in the free press of the United States—be considered a noble spirit.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  In other words, everything we’ve been told is wrong.  And, I can say, that the enduring lies are so successful that that includes much of what has been broadcast on [our own] Pacifica Radio [network] and any number of left-liberal outlets.  Any attempt to edit the Wikipedia entry on the Rwandan Genocide triggers so many edit alerts that it starts a Wiki editing war until the Wikipedia authorities declare a cease-fire with no changes made.

“That Wikipedia entry is all but written in stone.

“Now, can we just go through the chapter headings in your book, each of which addresses one of the enduring lies?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Yes, let’s do that.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay. Since you’ve already given us some background and context, let’s start with chapter two, “The RPF invasion and low level aggressive war, that never was a civil war”.  People who know the story of the Rwandan genocide only through the [2004] movie Hotel Rwanda are likely to think it was an explosion of tribal bloodletting, that began and ended in a hundred days’ time in 1994.  Those who know it was actually the final hundred days of a four-year war are likely to believe that it was the end of a Rwandan Civil War.  There is an entry in Wikipedia on the Rwandan Civil War.  Why is this an enduring lie?”  (c. 7:21)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, it turns out there was no major ethnic conflict in Rwanda back in late 1990.

“What happened in October 1990 was an invasion of armed forces from Uganda who [had] just received a group of Tutsi, of several thousand Tutsi soldiers, who were part of the Ugandan army.  They entered.  They pushed out the Hutu of their homes, several hundred thousand Hutu farmers in northern Rwanda.  And they were pushed back.  But they kept coming.  And the United States and [mutual] allies gave them assistance.

“They put pressure on the Rwandan government to sign the Arusha Agreement in 1993, which gave the RPF a lot of power in Rwanda.  But it also provided for an election to be held about 22 months in advance.  And that election is something that the Rwandan, the RPF could not have won.  They didn’t have to win that election because they carried out a war starting in April 1994.  And, by the end of 1994, they’d conquered Rwanda.

“So, the whole period from October 1990 to August-September 1994 was a period in which the RPF was engaging in subversion, readying itself for a final war of conquest.  So, it was a war.  I would say this was a war.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Now, let’s consider Chapter Three:  ‘Hutu Power Extremists Did Not Shoot Down Habyarimana’s Falcon 50 Jet’.

“Just for background here, Juvénal Habyarimana was the president of Rwanda from 1973 until he was assassinated in 1994, just before these elections were supposed to happen.  It was a year before these elections were supposed to happen, if I remember.

“He was a Hutu, a member of Rwanda’s Hutu majority, who had overcome centuries of Tutsi subjugation with the independence in 1960.  He died while returning home, along with Burundian President Cyprien Ntaryamira, when his plane was shot out of the sky above Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.  After four years of wars and massacres, which had driven a million Rwandans to the outskirts of Kigali, where they were encamped as internal refugees, this convinced the Hutu population that the Tutsi army was coming to kill or subjugate them all again and triggered Hutu massacres of Rwandan Tutsi.

“Now, the Rwandan government narrative is that Hutu extremists assassinated Habyarimana because he might have blocked their genocidal plans.  What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “There’s no evidence of these genocidal plans.  And the Hutu would’ve won the election that was forthcoming.  It was foreclosed by the assassination and the conquest by Kagame.

“But we don’t have to just speculate about that.  Actually, the Rwanda Tribunal had carried out an investigation of who shot the plane down back in 1996 and 1997.  They appointed a 20-man group and carried out this study.  And this group came up with a report in 1996 based on what they thought to be credible confessions by RPF people that Kagame had planned the assassination and carried it out.

“Well, when this report was presented to the prosecutor of the tribunal, he consulted the United States.  And they cancelled the investigation.  And from 1996 to the present, although the shoot down of this plane is widely thought to be the event, that triggered the genocide,  the tribunal hasn’t looked into it.  And the UN hasn’t looked into it beyond that.

“There’s lots of other evidence that the shoot down was carried out by Kagame.  And it was logical, too; because he couldn’t win an election, he attained power by conquest.  So, he shot the plane down.

“And another point that shows that he was the villain in the case is that when the plane was shot down April 6, 1994 his forces were ready and were in action within two hours of the shoot down, whereas the alleged plotters were completely bamboozled and confused and put up almost no resistance.

“So, anyway, the evidence is compelling that the shoot down was carried out by Kagame.  And it’s logical.  And it’s a proven fact.”  (c. 12:02)

ANN GARRISON:  “And, even whether you believe the evidence or not, Paul Kagame and his forces were the only ones who stood to gain by Habyarimana’s assassination and what happened afterwards.  Right?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Yes.  He’s the only gainer from it.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Let’s move on to Chapter Four:  ‘Rwandan Genocide ‘By the Numbers”

“When Professor Allan Stam wrote to a UN official to ask how he estimated that the dead in Rwanda were 500,000, he responded that he couldn’t quite remember.  The UN official responded that he couldn’t quite remember, but they knew they needed a really big number.

“The numbers that, eventually, came to be most widely accepted were that 800,000 to a million Tutsi and a few Hutu moderates, who tried to protect them, died at the hands of Hutu extremists.  Why is this impossible?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, it’s impossible because the numbers of Tutsi in Rwanda back in 1994 was way under 800,000.  In fact, the best figure one could come up with in those early years were based on the Rwandan Census of 1991, which gave the Tutsi numbers at about 590,000.  So, if all of them were wiped out, it wouldn’t come anywhere near 800,000.  But all of them weren’t wiped out.  After the war, the best estimate, which is by a Tutsi survival group was that there are 400,000 Tutsi still there.  So, then, let’s say there were 600,000 beforehand and afterwards there were 400-, that means 200,000 dead Tutsi.  If there were 800,000 killed and 200,000 of them were Tutsi, 600,000 of them must have been Hutu.  If it was a million, 800,000 of them must have been Hutu.

“And, in fact, it’s completely logical that the Hutu were the ones who were the greatest victims by number because this was an invasion by a Tutsi army.  That Tutsi army wasn’t killing Tutsi.  It was killing Hutus.

“So, in fact, I could conclude; and some others, Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, who did a very careful study of the killings in 1994, we come up with the conclusion that many more Hutus were killed than Tutsi.  And my estimate would be that it is between two-to-one and five-to-one ratio, probably more like four-to-one is my best point estimate.”  (c. 14:35)

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  And, just because this is a very sensitive subject, I just want to add that this was a tragedy for everyone in Rwanda.  Hutus and Tutsis died.

“Now, let’s move on to Chapter Five:  ‘The West’s Alleged ‘Failure to Intervene”.  The story of the west’s failure to intervene to stop the Rwandan genocide has become the starting point of all the campaigns to go to war to ‘stop the next Rwanda’.  What’s wrong with this story?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “What’s wrong with it is that the West was intervening from the very beginning.  The West supported Kagame’s invasion in 1990.  He was trained at Fort Leavenworth in the United States.  And Britain pressed the Rwandan government to allow the RPF to penetrate and to bring armed forces into Rwanda.

“But Kagame, just before the shoot down of the plane in April 1996, just before that shoot down, the United States caused the UN to withdraw some of its troops.  And that was an intervention, after the shoot down and the killings, the mass killings really started.

“The government of Rwanda called for cease fire repeatedly.  But Kagame did not want it because he knew he could win.  And that’s when the United States did not support any cease fire.  And they recognised Kagame’s government after just three months of war.

“It’s absolutely untrue that the West failed to intervene.  They did intervene.  But they intervened to support the man who was engaging in this war of conquest in Rwanda.

ANN GARRISON:  “Yeah.  I think that really needs emphasis.  People have been led to believe that the massacres started and Paul Kagame and his army moved in to stop them.  What actually happened was that the massacres began and Paul Kagame resumed the war to win at all costs.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Yes.  That’s true.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “In fact, one could say that all the dead people are collateral damage.  The aim of the United States is to support Kagame’s taking over.  And, if vast numbers of people were killed, that was a cost they were prepared to spend.

“But it doesn’t look good.  So, we have to say:  We failed to intervene.  We failed to stop it.  Well, in fact, we, not only, failed to stop it, we actually supported the mass killing.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Yeah.  Allan Stam, Professor Allan Stam has reported that the Pentagon estimated collateral damage of 250,000 people, a quarter million.  It turned out to be closer to a million.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “[inaudible]”

ANN GARRISON:  “Those are some pretty grim numbers.  The Pentagon, according to Professor Allan Stam, estimated that the collateral damage for putting our guy, Kagame, in power, in Rwanda, would be 250,000 thousand lives.  But it was closer to a million.

“Let’s take a breath, and a musical break.  And we’ll be back shortly.  [snip]”  (c. 17:50)

[music break]

ANN GARRISON:  “[snip]  Okay.  Chapter Six:  “The ICTR Delivers ‘Victor’s Justice'”

“Now, the International Tribunal on Rwanda is hailed as a great triumph of international justice, mostly in the corporate and state press.  What was it in fact?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “It did deliver a victor’s justice.  That first part of that statement is, therefore, correct.  [To say] it is a great triumph of international justice, is a complete fallacy because victor’s justice is not international justice.  It is justice, as a kind of revenge.

“And, in fact, the ICTR served as a virtual arm of Kagame and the Rwandan state.  It went after only Hutu.  Although, as I’ve pointed out a while ago, the majority of killings were of Hutu in Rwanda.  But the RPF could not be put to trial.  And, of course, the shoot down; the tribunal found that the shoot down had been by Kagame’s forces; it cancelled any further investigation.  That’s victor’s justice and a triumph of international injustice.”

ANN GARRISON:  “They actually fired the prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, who had said that she was going to indict President Kagame for assassinating President Habyarimana.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “The prosecutor who dropped the case was Louise Arbour.  But Carla Del Ponte actually did try, as you say, to go after some RPF people.  She was not allowed to do it. She was fired a very short time after.

“Again, this is true victor’s justice.”  (c. 21:21)

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Chapter Seven:  ‘The Alleged Hutu Conspiracy to Commit Genocide’ that never was.

“The idea that Rwanda’s majority Hutu conspired to wipe out the Tutsi minority is central to the Rwandan government’s official narrative.  What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Yes.  This is true.  The [entreat], the belief that there was a conspiracy to commit genocide is swallowed by the ICTR,  It’s swallowed by Human Rights Watch.  It’s swallowed by many, many commentators that there was a conspiracy to commit genocide.

“But the tribunal, itself, when it had come to grips with this, found it couldn’t find any such conspiracy.  It did believe that there was a genocide.  I mean, certainly, there was mass killing.  But a conspiracy to commit genocide would have had to take place as a planned thing before the shoot down of the plane on April 6, 1994.

“And, so, when high level people of the Hutus were brought to trial, and there was an attempt to find that they actually had a plan, the tribunal couldn’t find it.

“In this book, we studied 15 top trials where there was an attempt to prove a conspiracy to commit genocide.  In all 15, the tribunal found that there was no evidence for a conspiracy.  There was killing.  It was labelled to be genocide.  But they could not find any pre-April 6th plan to commit genocide.  But they rejected this argument.

“But the defenders, the apologists of Kagame, continue to talk about this conspiracy to commit genocide.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Yeah.  I’ve noticed that.  The press doesn’t hesitate to repeat this, that there was a conspiracy before April sixth, even though no court at the International Criminal Tribunal in Rwanda convicted anyone of that crime.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “No.  At the same time, I consider it a remarkable fact.  It wipes out a lot of the claims of what happened in Rwanda.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Let’s go on to Chapter Eight:  ‘Did Paul Kagame’s RPF Really ‘Stop’ the Genocide?’

“This is the story that’s made him a celebrity in western capitols.  What’s the truth?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, as I’ve been saying, Kagame, actually, started the genocide.  He carried out the war.  He refused to accept any cease fires during the killing period.

“And I’ve made the case, I make the case, that more people were killed by Kagame’s RPF than were killed by any Hutus.  I think this is the inverse of the truth.  He started a genocide.  And, in fact, it never ended because after he’d won and conquered the country, he didn’t stop killing Hutus.

“And it was a short time lag he went in and tried to kill Hutu and do other things in the Congo, where vast numbers of Hutu are killed.

“I would argue that, insofar as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, it can be pasted up to the credit of Paul Kagame.

“But there was a second, bigger, genocide in the Congo.  That was also Paul Kagame.  He’s a double-genocidist.  One could argue, too, that Bill Clinton was a partner in this.  Bill Clinton’s, arguably, a genocidist.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Yes.  And one would hope that people might consider that in this upcoming election year.  I know that people from this part of the world are very concerned about the likelihood of Hillary Clinton‘s election.

“Okay.  Chapter Nine: ‘Africa’s World War’.

“Kagame’s alleged pursuit of ‘genocidaires’ in Zaire, which became the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the death of millions.  What’s wrong with Kagame’s claim that his troops and proxy militias were in [inaudible] Congo for nearly 20 years to hunt down the Hutu genocidaires guilty of killing Rwanda’s Tutsi in 1994?”  (c. 25:48)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, one problem is there were no genocidaires.  There were members of the Rwandan army, that had been beaten and dispersed.  But they were not genocidaires.  That’s baloney.  And he knows who did the killing, namely, he himself with the forces.

“But, also, the army, that was in the Congo, they had had an all-Tutu army, was no longer a real force.  It had been defeated.  And these people were dispersed in the Congo.  It did not constitute a real threat to Rwanda.

“So, this claim was, really, essentially, a big lie, that Kagame was using, with the support of the United States, to continue attacking in the Congo.  Now, you couldn’t say:  I’m going in to the Congo to exploit their rich resources.  No, you have to have a better excuse.  And, so, the excuse was:  There was these people who had committed planned genocide in Rwanda; and I’m going in to the Congo after them, and for 20 years.

“I mean this is baloney.  But it’s very effective.

“It’s one reason why the ICTR, the tribunal, and the continuous prosecution of Hutu in Rwanda played into Kagame’s hands.  He could argue:  Look, these people are being tried and convicted.  These are people who committed genocide.  And there’s some of them out there in the Congo.  So, I must hunt down these evil criminals.  It’s a wonderful propaganda gambit.  And it was swallowed in the west.  And he was not stopped.

“So, we’re dealing with here, really, mass killing.  And, yet, no tribunal has ever been established to try anybody for these crimes, that tower over, even, what happened in Rwanda.  Why is that?  It’s because he’s a U.S. client and he serves the U.S. and British interests in this rich Republic of the Congo.”  (c. 27:46)

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Now, finally, the role of the UN, human rights groups, media, and intellectuals in promulgating all these enduring lies, otherwise known as ‘the standard model’, the official narrative of the Rwandan Genocide.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, the United States has been the superpower, as it dominated in what has happened in this area, in the Congo, and in Rwanda.  The American people know almost nothing about the area.  And, since the United States has a strong position of support for Kagame and for the invasion of the Congo, that dominated all the institutions, that were associated with it, the UN, where most of its reports were in support of the invasion.  They swallowed the conspiracy to commit genocide line.  They provided the tribunal.  It’s true that they did have some reports, like these reports I mentioned, that talked about mass killing in the Congo.  But they couldn’t avoid that because it was such an enormous volume of killing and millions of refugees.  So, the UN had to confront it.  And they had to speak a certain amount of truth.

“But, essentially, the UN supported the US position.  Even during the Rwanda crisis in 1994, the UN did nothing while Kagame took a lot of military people right into Kagali.  They let him get away with it.

“The human rights groups also did poorly.  Human Rights Watch was an outrage from the beginning, following the standard line.

“The media [to] April 2014, the 20 advocates for the standard model were treated with great respect, great generosity, over 181 articles in the mainstream media.  Of the 20 defenders of the standard model, there were a grand total of 17 articles; and most of them were in France.  And most of these experts, that were dissenters, could never get into the mainstream media at all.  And particularly terrible was the US and British media.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  Now that we’ve gone through the enduring lies, what similarities do you see between Rwanda in 1990 to 1994 and thereafter in the Congo.  What’s happening in Burundi now?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, one very important similarity is that the United States and its allies are trying for regime change in Burundi, just as they did in Rwanda.  They wanted to get rid of the Habyarimana government, the social democratic government, in Rwanda.  They don’t like the social democratic government in Burundi.  And they’re trying to get rid of it.

“Another thing is that they’re talking of an intervention there based on the fact that the head of state of Burundi has taken a third term, which is contested on a constitutional basis.  But that the great powers should be upset about a third term, when they’re supporting Kagame, who is a dictator and who has his chief contestant in jail, and gets 93% of the vote, they swallow that and don’t bother him at all ahead of going after the Burundi state, which is, by comparison to Rwanda, a wonderful working democracy.  And it is a social democracy.

“There’s also an intervention, more directly, in Burundi now.  There’s strong effort.  In fact, the Kagame government has been intervening in Burundi and trying to stir up agitation and stimulating killings, that will cause more tension and upheaval in Burundi.  All this, this is all in preparation for further intervention to save the people from genocide.  This has a familiar ring to it.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  On page 20 of your book [Enduring Lies], you write:  ‘At the time’, meaning in the 1990s and in contrast to the crises in Syria, Ukraine, and Iraq today, ‘Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was a non-factor in the UN Security Council and a rubber stamp for the United States.’  Since you wrote that, Russia and China have begun to use their veto power.  And, this year, they used it to keep the council’s western powers from passing resolutions to censure Burundi’s President Nkurunziza for seeking a third term in office or to approve humanitarian intervention to quote-unquote ‘stop genocide’.  Nothing has yet come to a formal vote and veto.  But the US and EU keep failing to get the language they want in resolutions passed.

“Most recently, the Security Council was asked to approve an intervention by 5,000 African Union troops.  It responded, instead, that it welcomed contingency planning in case an intervention was needed, but without giving its approval.  How do you think this might play out?”  (c. 32:57)

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “That’s a tough one.  I’m just hoping that the Russians and the Chinese will stand firm and that this situation in Burundi will not deteriorate.  If it does, if the destabilisation efforts of Kagame and, probably, the United States are successful and becomes increasingly violent, then it’s going to be tougher.  The approval, that intervention from the African Union troops, I just hope that doesn’t happen.  But it’s very hard to predict.  But it’s an ominous situation.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Is there anything else you’d like to say in closing?”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “Well, what I’d like to say is that this is an issue on Rwanda and the struggles there and the work of the ICTR.  This is a very complicated issue with which people are not familiar.  So, I would urge people to get this book, that we put out, which has a lot of details.

“But there are also some other really excellent books, that I would like to recommend.  There’s a very good book called Justice Belied.  And it’s a book about the international justice system.  [Sébastien] Chartrand and [John] Philpot:  Justice Belied.  It’s a critical work on the workings of the international justice system.  And many of the writers in it are people who are very familiar with Rwanda and the issues in Africa.  And it’s even argued by some of the writers that the international justice system, as it’s now working, really makes it an arm of US foreign policy.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Okay.  And, here, I think we have to mention Robin Philpot’s book as well, Rwanda and the New Scramble for Africa: From Tragedy to Useful Imperial Fiction.  And, also, the TIUC Toronto Taylor Report, which has kept the truth about this story alive for nearly two decades.

“Professor Ed Herman, thank you for speaking to the Project Censored show.”

DR. EDWARD S. HERMAN:  “It was a pleasure, Ann.”

ANN GARRISON:  “Now, we’ll take a short musical break and, then, return to speak to Willy Nyamitwe, Communications Advisor to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza.  He’s going to tell us how much damage our UN Adviser Samantha Power is doing in Burundi.”  (c. 35:15)

[snip]

Learn more at PROJECT CENSORED.

[Transcript Excerpt by Messina for Lumpenproletariat.org]

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[1]  Also refer to Professor Walter Turner‘s excellent long-running weekly broadcast, Africa Today, on free speech radio KPFA.

[2]  From Amazon.com, on Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Years Later by Edward S. Herman and David Peterson (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (October 20, 2014)):

About the book:  The Rwandan genocide of 1994 has been called the “fastest, most efficient killing spree of the twentieth century. In 100 days, some 800,000 Tutsi and politically moderate Hutu were murdered. The United States did almost nothing to try to stop it” (U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, writing in 2002). In their book, Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System, 20 Year Later (The Real News Books), Edward S. Herman and David Peterson challenge these beliefs. With sections devoted to “The ‘Rwandan Genocide’ by the Numbers,” the Tutsi-led Rwandan Patriotic Front’s October 1990 invasion of Rwanda from Uganda and Paul Kagame’s ensuing 46-month war of conquest, the April 6, 1994 shoot-down of the Hutu President Juvénal Habyarimana’s jet on its return to Kigali, universally regarded as the event that triggered the mass bloodshed which followed, the mythical Hutu “conspiracy to commit genocide” against the country’s minority Tutsi population, the West’s alleged “failure to intervene” to stop the killings, Kagame Power’s triumph in Rwanda and its spread to the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, with a death toll running in the millions, and to the pernicious role played by the U.S., U.K., and Canadian governments, as well as by the United Nations, human rights groups, the media and intellectuals in promulgating a false history of 1994 Rwanda, the authors cross-examine what they call the “standard model” of the Rwandan genocide. “A brilliant dissection of the Western propaganda system on Rwanda,” writes Christopher Black, a Canadian attorney and the lead defense counsel before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

About the authors:  Edward S. Herman is professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and has written extensively on economics, political economy, and the media. Among his books are Corporate Control, Corporate Power (Cambridge University Press, 1981), The Real Terror Network (South End Press, 1982), and, with Noam Chomsky, The Political Economy of Human Rights (South End Press, 1979) and Manufacturing Consent (Pantheon, 2nd. Ed., 2002). David Peterson is an independent journalist and researcher based in Chicago. Together they are the co-authors of The Politics of Genocide (Monthly Review Press, 2nd. Ed., 2011).

[3]  From the KPFA.org audio archive page for Project Censored:

Rwanda, Burundi and Wars “To Stop the Next Rwanda”

Project Censored guest host Ann Garrison speaks to University of Pennsylvania Professor Emeritus Edward S. Herman, co-author of Manufacturing Consent, the Politics of Genocide, and Enduring Lies: The Rwandan Genocide in the Propaganda System 20 Years Later.  They discuss the gross distortions of what really happened in Rwanda that have become a rallying cry for humanitarian war “to stop the next Rwanda.”

Ann Garrison also speaks with Willy Nyamitwe, Communications Advisor to Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, about how that rallying cry is now deployed to advocate for invasion and regime change in Rwanda’s neighbor, Burundi.

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“We Want” by Junkyard Empire

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[3 JAN 2016  01:09 PDT]

[Last modified 7 JAN 2016  09:29 PDT]

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