Deep Delusions, Bitter Truth (The Trial of a Rwandan General) [A Play in Two Acts]-- Compiled by CM/P from the actual trial transcripts of 24 & 25 Jun

Deep Delusions, Bitter Truth (The Trial of a Rwandan General) [A Play in Two Acts]-- Compiled by CM/P from the actual trial transcripts of 24 & 25 Jun
Deep Delusions, Bitter Truth (The Trial of a Rwandan General) [A Play in Two Acts]-- Compiled by CM/P from the actual trial transcripts of 24 & 25 June, 2009

[It's as if Obama just can't exert himself, can't stand up to his full moral height, in the face of US militarism. After all, he didn't pick the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates--Gates was Bush's replacement for the piss-drunk and mendacious Donald Rumsfeld. He's trying to stand by his campaign promises of pulling US troops out of Iraq--though he has really nothing to say about US military strategy and tactics, martial appointments, field promotions. And as the violence mounts--and the bizarre phenomenon of multiple daily suicide bombings moves inexorably from Israel/Palestine and Iraq (with the occasional diversion into a Western capital like NYC/Washington, DC, London or Madrid) into Iran and Afghanistan--and with mostly political feints toward moving US troops around in that bedeviled region; and the Zionist campaign to destabilize the entire Middle East unto Russia's Central Asian 'near abroad' get kicked into some hyperdrive with uncritical--even, in some cases, unconscious mainstream media support of the by-now familiar manipulations of 'pro-Democracy', 'non-violent', ‘civil society’ regime changers attempting to invalidate popular elections: the US president can only react as if everything he knew about everything he learned from Wolf Blitzer in the Sitchiation Room.

{--Or, even worse than The Wolfman is the gruelingly unfunny Hoser, Jonathan Mann, who, while commenting on Obama’s Russian excursion on his pretentiously named CNN show, The Political Mann, noted that Russia now has two leaders: PM Vladimir Putin and President SERGEI Medvedev. I have yet to read or hear an erratum on this one--but there go all the Dr Strangelove gags.}

Look at President Obama’s speech in Accra:

Obama: “But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants.”

Really? CNN might've missed this, or it might be another Bush legacy, but . . .

--The Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 states that U.S. sanctions will remain in place against the Zimbabwean "government" [euphemism for "the people"] until the U.S. president certifies that the "rule of law has been restored in Zimbabwe, including respect for ownership and title to property. . . and an end to. . .lawlessness."
(from a site at http://www.nathanielturner.com/sanctionsonzimbabwe.htm -- with the interesting headnote: "Let's review the history of Zimbabwe lest we forget how European White settlers killed, plundered and stole in order to position themselves where they are today in Zimbabwe.")

One would think a Harvard lawyer might be able to work his way rhetorically around such dishonest denial without having to dump on all his criminal predecessors. For were not these British settlers Cecil Rhodes led into the former-Rhodesia to seize the best land for themselves, and work it with the life forces of the local residents, the same sort of parasitic teabags who used to call President Obama's Kenyan father and grandfather 'boy'?

And, though, ok, maybe Colonialism IS way overrated, why does he seem to gloat over the managed elections of March 2008 in Zimbabwe--a political strong-arm robbery mirrored in the Iranian voting of June 2009.

Obama: “We saw it in Zimbabwe, where the Election Support Network braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person's vote is their sacred right. . . . “

In both cases the minority opposition made a preemptive claim of victory before the polls had even closed. Then the ensuing street demonstrations instigated by Western Democracy-thru-non-violent-regime-change agents-provocateurs, spawns of the NED, USAID, and Geo Soros' Open Society cabal, created sufficient bloody chaos to break down the authority of the majority government. Because US liberals, including Obama, see little difference between majority interests and minority interests, this sort of glib, equivocating obscurantism is no surprise:

--”The people of Ghana have worked hard to put democracy on a firmer footing, with repeated peaceful transfers of power even in the wake of closely contested elections. (Applause.) And by the way, can I say that for that the minority deserves as much credit as the majority.”--(What does this mean?)

And, of course, what is being obscured is the far too obvious iron hand of American militarism at the throat of African history. Obama cites all the usual African transgressions, but manages to turn responsibility for them back onto the victims, themselves: Tribal or ethnic or religious wars, using child soldiers, involving rape (systemic rape, whatever that is), and the inevitable terrorism unto genocide--and he localizes all these abominations most strategically: 'the value of every child in Darfur and the dignity of every woman in the Congo'; genocide in Darfur and (Islamic?) terrorism in Somalia; no US-ordered foreign invasions, no US-trained and equipped mercenaries leading death squads throughout the continent, no unconscionable dumping of deadly weapons and as-deadly medicines to mix with the unregulated degradation of ecosystems by the effluvia of industrial mining--the real African plagues being covered up by the HIV/AIDS phantasmagoria.

I suppose that Obama got out of Russia without ever acknowledging the US and NATO's responsibility for the wave of terrorism that has afflicted that country since the destabilization of Afghanistan by the US-backed mujahadeen in the late 1970s (now the Taliban), and the so-called Islamic uprisings from Bosnia and Kosovo to Chechnya that allowed the metastasis of US military bases currently strangling the former Soviet territories and China; that he got out of Italy without having to kiss Berlesconi's ring or the Pope's teenage boyfriend; and that he got out of Africa without having to explain why his hands-off policy toward his ancient homeland last year necessitated at $2 billion allotment for military aid and a still undisclosed budget for AFRICOM: I suppose these are all testimony to Obama's endearing young charm and his skills as an orator. But as long as he remains this far away from quotidian Reality, driven off by the monstrous killing machine that has taken over the entire reproductive-force of the USA, there can be little or no hope of his ever realizing an end to territorial and resource wars and bringing international war criminals to justice.

As goes the African proverb sampled by Robin Philpot in his wonderful 'Ça n'est pas passé comme ça à Kigali' (now in English translation as 'Rwanda 1994: Colonialism Dies Hard', and available free on Phil Taylor's site linked to the right of this blog):

--Until lions produce their own historians, the story of the hunt will glorify only the hunter.--

But we here at CM/P are trying hard to produce our own hunters--or historians--or something. We're producing a new play, at any rate. And it's attached to the bottom of this post. We composed, or compiled this two-act, one-man show from the transcripts of General Ndindiliyimana's trial at the ICTR. To be exact, the piece is made up mostly of Chris Black's final summation to the Tribunal in the Military II case.

So, here it is: The End of The General's Trial: Begging or Buggering Justice? --mc]

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

[A Courtroom Drama in Two Acts]

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

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

IN BLACK:

FIRST VO [Prosecutor Mr. Van]
Mr. President, if you hate somebody, it's not because you want to live with that person. And we are in a
war context. So if you consider that the Tutsi are an enemy, the Hutu, who did not want the Tutsi, and
actually hated the Tutsi, logically had to hurriedly exterminate the Tutsi, or else the Tutsi would
exterminate them. And that is the situation. When you say that you hate somebody, it is not a joke.
Besides, Mr. President, Your Honors, the results are there; the Tutsis were killed. They were
massacred, they were exterminated, and there was genocide.

SECOND VO [Thespus]
Yet the Tutsis minority wound up seizing state power and taking over Rwanda from the Hutu majority!

FIRST VO
In the Karemera case, the Appeals Chamber took judicial note of that.

SECOND VO
The order to take ‘Judicial Notice’ effectively removed from the Prosecution any burden of having to
produce evidence to prove the genocide actually took place.

LIGHTS UP:
Alone on stage is Maitre Christopher Black, Defense attorney to Major General Augustin
Ndindiliyimana, former Chief of Staff of the Rwandan National Gendarmerie during the troubles
of 1993 and 1994, on trial before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, in Arusha,
Tanzania, on charges of Crimes against Humanity unto Genocide.

Mr. Black is just over 60 and very weary from his long travail.

The Judges sit OS DR, the Prosecution is OS UR, and the Defendants are OS UL. After

SEVERAL BEATS, Maitre Black speaks:

MR. BLACK:
Mr. Sefon, yesterday, referred to two interesting books. And I find the reference he made--and the fact
that he made that reference--that the Prosecution made that reference, very interesting. He referred to
Niccolò Machiavelli's book, The Prince. Everybody here, I assume, who went to law school has read
that at some time. And it's a book written by a man who was forced by a regime, the Medicis at that
time, to bow to a dictatorship, and decided to write a book to please his master about how to rule a
people who did not want to be ruled by a dictator. And one of Machiavelli's words of wisdom in that
book of realpolitik was that deception is one of the ways in which to control a people, deception and
fear.

Mr Sefon also made reference to The Art of War, by the Chinese military scholar, Sun Tzu. That is also
a very important book, studied in all military colleges and by philosophers, because it sets out how wars
are really conducted. And Sun Tzu's first lesson in that book, in the opening pages, is about the art of
deception, and how the art of deception is the key to winning any conflict.

And I raise that because it's quite clear that the Prosecution in this Tribunal is part and parcel of the
grand deception which is being woven--has been woven by the RPF and its neocolonial masters, the
United States and the United Kingdom, for the last 15 years.

Why do I say that? I will go into why it's evident that the--the Prosecution here has manipulated this
Court since day-one, and how they have tried to cover up the crimes of the RPF, how they, despite the
rank hypocrisy expressed by Mr. [Abubacarr] Tambadou and Mr. [Alphonse] Van, that they wish and
desire international justice and the erasing of immunity from prosecution for world leaders, when they, in
fact, have done nothing but grant those murderers in the RPF immunity from prosecution from the
beginning.

And I'm not alone in saying this. I have here a letter which has been sent by 50 world scholars and
human rights defenders from universities in Canada, the United States, Britain, from
Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International. They include professors from Columbia University,
Princeton, the University of California, the University of Antwerp, and on and on. Including the husband
of the late Dr. Alison Des Forges, Professor Roger Des Forges, and including the former expert for the
Prosecution, Filip Reyntjens, who refuses to work for the Prosecution any longer.

This letter is addressed to Ban Ki-Moon, President Barack Obama, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and
copied to Hillary Clinton and various other American and British Foreign Ministry officials, because,
obviously, they're the ones who control this Tribunal. It is also copied to Judge Dennis Byron, and to
Prosecutor Hassan B. Jallow.

It says that Mr. Jallow--that the RPF has committed crimes, and that Mr. Jallow expresses an evident
reluctance to prosecute these RPF crimes. And this is clearly the result of intimidation and
obstructionism by the RPF, which now rules Rwanda. The Prosecutor, Jallow, has severely
compromised his prosecutorial independence and the Tribunal's integrity.

But they conclude with this: "In conclusion, we call on you to ensure that the ICTR prosecutes RPF
crimes. This issue should be raised when Prosecutor Jallow addresses the United Nations
Security Council about his completion strategy on June 4th, 2009. Unless the Prosecutor acts swiftly,
the ICTR will squander not only its last chance to provide accountability for those serious crimes, but
also its legitimacy."

It's dated May 31st of this year. Another professor, Dr. Hans Köchler, at the University of Innsbruck in
Austria, and who was selected as the Secretary General's personal representative at the Lockerbie trial
and still acts in that capacity, wrote a book called Global Justice and Global Revenge, about these
ad hoc tribunals and, with respect to the ICTR, stated that the Prosecution has engaged in selective
prosecution on ‘a massive scale,’ quote-unquote, ‘a massive scale.’ Now, why?

I don't think Mr. Jallow is afraid of a little man like Mr. Kagame in in Kigali. No. Mr. Jallow is not afraid
of that little man. He is controlled by bigger powers than that. And that's why this letter is addressed to
those powers. And if my friends over there [the Prosecution] want to sit in service of neocolonialism,
shame on them. But I don't think this Court should acquiesce to the planning out of neocolonialism and
imperialism in Africa by listening and accepting the manipulations presented to this Court and the
argument they pretend to make as evidence.

[To read more see the entire play in the attachment.--cm/p]

.
Attachments:
Deep Delusions, Bitter Truth.pdf (246KB)