Le Hotel Rwanda
The UK Times describes the gloom at the French mission after its ambassador was expelled from Rwanda after the African country charged that France had masterminded the genocide. Here's more background from the UK Times:
Rwanda has recalled its ambassador to France as the row between the two countries over culpability for the 1994 Rwandan genocide spiralled to a new low. The decision to bring Emmanuel Ndagijimana home from Paris was made after a French judge issued arrest warrants for nine high-ranking Rwandans accused of involvement in the assassination of then-President Juvenal Habyarimana – an occurrence which triggered the mass slaughter. ...
Rwanda has accused Paris of making the allegations as a means of covering up its own role in training soldiers who carried out the genocide. Yesterday, 25,000 Rwandans protested in Kigali against France, accusing it of complicity in the slaughter – a charge Paris has always denied.
Commentary
Whichever of the two is guilty, it's interesting to compare the International mode of justice to that which hanged Saddam Hussein. Milosevic died in captivity. In the case of Rwanda, no major statesmen, just a few flunkies, have been indicted for the genocide. It's already on its way, after some theatrics, to the dustbin of history or perhaps more appropriately, to its graveyard. Yet there is some preference for running the world in this indefinite manner. Letting stuff just happen. Like Darfur. And deciding that stuff just happened, like Rwanda. It's the perfect postmodern world. A world with many narratives all of which may be incompatible. But ces't la vie. Or as Willie Nelson was once rumored to have pronounced it: sest lah vee.
posted by wretchardthecat at 1/05/2007 04:29:00 PM
25 Comments:
On "whichever of the two is guilty", see this Times review of Silent Accomplice: The Untold Story of France's Role in the Rwandan Genocide.
Were Rwanda or Darfur Nigeria, color would not matter. For that matter, how much press is the fighting Somalia getting?
Rarely, if ever, is there a geo political narrative to stories coming out of Africa. My suspicion this is done on purpose and isn't coincidental. Anyone care to guess why that is.
Easy for her to say Bobal:
Once she caught you,
Money and Power were in hand.
No catch and release for you!
U.S. ships hunt for al Qaeda off Somalia
U.S. Navy warships yesterday stepped up patrols off Somalia, boarding fishing boats and oil tankers to search for al Qaeda agents who fled after their Islamist allies were chased into hiding.
Bush and Fallon care more about all the trickling down trimmings from Weyland-Yutani than killing AQ. Bush went into Iraq to study AQ, to turn it into a weapon Weyland-Yutani could sell, perhaps. Whatever it was, it wasn't to kill them and not bring back.
Wallace and Limbaugh were incredulous when grilling Clinton about his costly policies. If you attacked OBL or AQ, where is the evidence? We went over every inch of your documents and plans and found nothing like the plans you described!
Clinton's response will echo in eternity: "That's because I blew the plans out of the god damned airlock, you rightwing hitjob!"
Clinton asked America if its IQ had dropped while he was gentrifying Harlem by serenading the property with his saxophone. What was America's response? Election 2004.
And now Bush wants to build a research colony in Kurdistan. I can see exactly where this is going...
I saw Blood Diamond tonight at the Lee Highway Multiplex. DiCaprio played the same role he did in the Titanic to the same effect.
Someone needs to tell DiCaprio that rich liberal western women can be as toxic as african women with aids.
This is about the third movie out of Africa I've seen in recent years that portrayed the place as hell on earth. All these places were west or south africa. They were pretty much all movies made by liberals for liberals. Why do the movies always portray some green hell? Likely because that's what they are. But I also think that for Liberals -- What they see does not compute.
So why does Rick Warren author of a purpose driven life try to save rwanda and endorse obama?
I think the reason is that white california around lake forest is slowly being hemmed in by illegals. Whites are slowly being driven out of california. and warren has to go all the way to rwanda to escape the bitterness of it.
I live inside the beltway of the suburbs of washington dc. This whole area will become minority white within a decade. Fairfax county voted (liberal)democratic in the presidential election in 2004 for the first time since 1964 when it voted (dixicrat democratic).
Fall Church Episcopal, the home church of george washington voted itself out of the episcopal church of america because of the main body's stand on homosexuals in the priesthood. Falls Church Episcopal as well as nearby Turo Episcopal joined the Nigerian Episcopal Church Which is currently threatening to secede from the episcopal communion over the church stand on homosexuality. The nigerians know a little something about evil as the witch doctors there regularly practice human sacrifice. Mutilated west african bodies will sometimes show up in the Thames. It would not compute to liberals that homosexuality in england and human sacrifice in Nigeria are two sides of the same coin.
For the most part the news is driven by the interests of the extremely rich who are nomads.
Perhaps the better buy for conservatives would be not so much the NY Times -- as the AP wire service.
De Beers made some effort to blackball Blood Diamond. But according to the story -- which takes place in 1999 -- the worst part of the "conflict diamond" trafficing was ended by international treaty in 2003. Not mentioned in Blood Diamond was that --At the time OBL was reputed to funding al quaeda with west african diamonds. likely that trade was silenced.
"Life is cheap in parts of Africa."
...sometimes I think "what the fuuuck?" I know what you mean, but it is this struggle to change those minds who think that, that we battle with...that one man's life is worthless.
I was saying 'wtf?!?!!' a lot reading the times and the comments. I have to rely on faith on the people I know and thee people in power and as far as it goes up the chain...that *they* know wtf is going on, and that they consider all France's protestation about *our* "bad behavior" in light of what to them seems acceptable ends and justifications in pursuit of their country's interests...and dare I mention personal interests?
"oh but who has those?"
Serve if you claim to, suffer scorn otherwise, ridicule and a perpetual mockery to those who will study you and your history...some of us are laughing now.
As far as coverage of this and so many real messes...grammas watching MSM don't know because MSM have self interest and declining profit issues to deal with...defenders of the...
Let's face it, most countries are loathe go straight out and beat down another country...endless self-interest in the UN has made it a failure to act, react or proact to protect some hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people from being killed....I don't have a problem with bombing the shit out of mass murderers, apparently others differ, would rather be a lamb brought to slaughter...sacrificed for someone's God, someone's party, or someone else's belief...some lie they've been fed...
I'm tired of rescuing various parts of Africa from their barbarity, savagery, droughts and starving to death. We've been doing this for decades now and they're still killing each other with great glee and abandon.
You'd think they'd stop it after a while just out of sheer exhaustion, but nooooooo. There are no signs pending that the continent has reached that level of maturity or accountability.
I find it difficult to wade through descriptions of the latest slaughter, and even more difficult to raise a scootch of care. Although if it's the French who are the slaughterers, I can get interested in that for the sake of being mean to the Frogs.
Otherwise ... as you were, and carry on. (And Palestinians and Iraqi's should take note what tribal warfare and vengeance leads to.)
20 dog years perhaps.
Long before 2 decades is out, the spoiled chickens will have come home to roost.
See Doug? As you stated to me way back, you are resigned to the "fact" that Malthus had it right all along. Now it seems it took a French sensibility to do something about it. Feels about "right" does it?
Wretchard never says one way or the other; but based upon what he reports upon he either mostly is as appalled as I am, or revels in satisfying those such as C4.
...he's an "honest and sincere man."
Just sincerely does not believe he needs to enforce the laws he swore to enforce.
Not sure the connection you are making there, Pascal.
I simply refer to el Presidente's refusal to enforce the law, and his lack of caring about the fates of the tens of thousands of innocent citizens slaughtered by those lawbreakers.
Oh, excuse me Dodge. I was addressing Doug.
Bush is the one dodging the law.
What else you refer to I don't understand.
If you would care to explain, perhaps I would.
Wretchard wrote:
ces't la vie [sic]
Wretchard, how you ended with c'est la vie is noticeable to moi.
You "mistyped" it?
I like it!
It kind of lends to the old française cliché a rather neat bit of anglicizing (something the French hate to begin with).
It was as if to say "that is not life." I like that better far better than the Nelson botching.
But how about this offering? Even though he's not French, I'd like to paraphrase Sir McCartney with what I humbly think is a more fitting ending for your wretched post.
We used to say live and let live.
(You know we did,
You know we did,
You know we did.)
Now we say,
Live and let die.
Live and let die.
Live and let die.
Live and let die.
Now, is "we" only the French? Non, non, non.
But oui, the Frogs seem to have a hand in just about every pass that is given (when they are not openly visible (as now?) in the promotions) to these sort of things.
Afterall, we gotta give credit where credit is do. The French prez did markedly not hug Mugabe at the last Franco-subSaharan Aftican pow-wow. He just took his hand [clears throat] in friendship.
I may owe you an apology Doug. I went back to where we had a related conversation before, on Jan 19, 2006.
It seems now that all you said was: "I agree with you about the death cult, but I find it hard to agree that population itself is not a problem."
Somehow I thought you had taken a more aggressive stance. I tend to be far more optimistic than most about population being a threat. As is clear from this post of Wretchard's, the clearest threat is to populations, often the poorest, by the malevolent influence of those much richer.
Pascal,
Charles mentioned the illegal immigration problem, I assumed C-4 was commenting on that re:
Bush not enforcing the law or the borders.
That was all I was commenting on.
I see materialism checking population.
Problem is, it also checks the human spirit.
...in the developed world, which is not the topic, nor is our illegal immigration problem.
Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Pascal's Exhibit A.
Careful, Barry, don't upset the Turks,
...or the State Dept.
ces't la vie
The rest, as they say, is history.
Asperger,
Right:
W's research colony on Mars.
Is someone implying that "no news out of Africa" reflects rascist tendencies of First World mass media? Nay... like South America, sub-Saharan Africa from a newsroom perspective is a mere catalogue of alarums and excursions, typically brutal and ugly. Absent epidemiological threats (AIDS, Ebola virus), extraction industry risks (diamonds, gold, oil), genocidal proxy wars, the continent persists like Haiti-- whatever "goes on", nothing ever happens. So who cares?
When "Africa" from Darfur to Rwanda, from Kigali to Bulawayo and "Cape to Cairo" contributes anything whatever of world interest, over-eager reporters will slather it with gunk. Meantime, better AP's phoney riots in Baghdad than entire populaces exterminated around Lake Victoria.
Doug,
Commentary makes that video hilarious. But you're still hijacking the thread.
Email me and I'll expound at length on how simple-minded adversarial and demonstrably watermelon fertilizer is Exhibit A.
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