You might have seen a story pop up in the last twenty four hours called “Apartheid and Genocide: US Supports Kagame Dictatorship and Political Oppression in Rwanda”.
It arrived in my inbox by way of a Google Alert under the auspices of the Centre of Research into Globalization which sounds like an impressive institution. I am not going to link to it because it is nothing more than a collection of outrageous, unfounded and, frankly, bizarre lies alleging ethnic persecution in contemporary Rwanda alongside straightforward genocide denial and lame attempts at historical revisionism.
That said, the title and the grandiose-sounding organisation from whence the article originated might cause some Rwandans concern about the emergence of a new voice of denial and revisionism. Conversely, it would have sent a frisson of excitement through the ranks of haters and baiters like Laura Seay and Susan Thomson who enjoy nothing more than writing and promulgating fact-free polemical assaults against Rwanda.
Well, everyone can take a chill pill.
The Centre of Research into Globalization is the vanity project of an Ottawa-based professor called Michel Chossudovsky. And who is Michel Chossudovsky? To answer that question, I defer to Terry O’Neill of the Western Standard in an article entitled “Canada’s Nuttiest Professors”:
“As overseer of the anti-U.S., anti-globalization website GlobalResearch.ca, Chossudovsky has manufactured a long list of eyebrow-raising accusations that often read more like wild-eyed conspiracy theories than serious political discourse: the U.S. had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks (“Of course they knew!”); “Washington’s New World Order weapons have the ability to trigger climate change”; the U.S. knew in advance about the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but kept it to themselves (apparently so they could ride to the rescue of devastated coastal regions); big banking orchestrates the collapse of national economies. Of course, all that talk of banking conspiracies can lead one into some bigoted territory. B’nai Brith Canada has complained to the University of Ottawa about anti-Semitic postings on Chossudovsky’s site.”
In other words, this latest Paul Kagame basher is an anti-Semitic truther who thinks the US has the power to orchestrate climate change and inflict tsunamis willy-nilly. What a silly billy.
Since O’Neill’s article, Chossudovsky has spent a great deal of time defending the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad, including in this recent appearance on Putin’s propaganda network, RT, where he also claims that Al Qaeda was formed by the CIA. He was also a noted supporter of former Serbian dictator and mass murderer Slobodan Milošević who also enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of that other noted Canadian denier of the Genocide Against the Tutsis, Christopher Black, who was a leading member of the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milošević . Strange, deranged and dangerous people.
Rest easy, my Rwandan brothers and sisters. Every country has its enemies. It is strangely reassuring, in Rwanda’s case, they are invariably such fringe-dwelling lunatics.
