CHU Stuiptrekkingen Via Hans Gualthérie van Weezel

Hans Gualthérie van Weezel, voormalig CHU, wil graag illegale vreemdelingen oppakken bij de grens en schets daarvoor een vals beeld van wie slachtoffer worden van die grenscontroles. Gerd Leers doet zijn uiterste best om zo ver mogelijk weg te blijven van van Weezel's sprookjes.

Aanleiding voor de commotie zijn de prejudiciele vragen van de Raad van State van 15 juni.

Obama-Biden House Party? Thanks, no thanks

June 18, 2012

Dear David Onek:

Regarding your invitation to a house party for the Obama-Biden campaign:

Sigh. I voted for you in last fall's San Francisco District Attorney's race. I have also voted for and otherwise supported California State Assemblyman Tom Ammiano and San Francisco Supervisor and 2011 mayoral candidate John Avalos at various points. I'm sorry you feel compelled to support Barack Obama and Joseph Biden after the last three years as a matter of Democratic Party loyalty. What else could bring this cast of characters, including Supervisors Scott Weiner and Malia Cohen, together?

There's gotta be something better than drone bombing the world so the 1% and the military industries synonymous with "national security" can vacuum their resources.

Sincerely-Ann Garrison

P.S.  Please note also: Roberto Unger, Obama's Former Harvard Law School Professor, Says The President 'Must Be Defeated', Huffington Post, 06.17.2012

Bahindiro's Heroic King, Really?

May 8th 2012 Pan Butamire, an excellent blogger, posted a beautiful summary of how Rwanda's RPF frames it's regional role in the context of Rwanda's history which explains it's internal and external propaganda strategy:

"But maybe there is no panic here. Maybe there is cold calculation at the heart of it all. Cold calculation whose expression we may find in a distant city, in a distant land, in a distant era.

Berlin, Germany, 1884/5. Rwandans may never know what was discussed in the Berlin Conference. They may never know how the partition of Africa was decided on. But they know that, whatever the method of decision, at the end of it they came out the ‘tinier’ for it.

From a vast country that covered swathes of eastern Congo, southern Uganda and north-western Tanganyika, Rwanda became the tiny hill of Central Africa. There is no doubt that having a strong, centrally-organised administration had something to do with it. No one wants a strong, bothersome influence near when they set out to ‘civilise’ a region.
So, at the Berlin Conference, they all – repeat, all – agreed to crop Rwanda until it became a hilly patch of land. Also, Germans and Belgians may have disagreed on everything but, as colonialists, they were in agreement when it came to ‘partitioning’ Rwandans into three ‘races’. Yes, later improved to ‘ethnic groups’ to cater for the culture, language, et al, Rwandans share. Still, a ‘different-races’ construct.

The truly ‘tiny’ clan (not ‘tiny’ land!) of Bahindiro that provided a leader was turned into a representative of a whole section of Rwandans. To cap it all, these were branded “invaders from Ethiopia and further north”. Rwanda became a land of a ‘thousand’ disparate hills and ‘three’ disparate races.

From then on, this is the narrative about Rwanda that the Western world has driven and continues to drive. This is the holy cow. There are, of course, other ‘cows’ for other countries. But for Rwanda, this is the ‘untouchable’ elephant in the room.

And that explains a whole horde of things that would need more than a ‘thousand’ pages to delve into."

Abdul Ruzibiza once introduced himself as a descendant of the Bahindiro clan

« Par mon père, je suis tutsi, issu de la souche des « Abanyiginya-Abahindiro ».

Eugene Rwamucyo's thorough blogpost sheds light on this same period, before the Berlin conference, when he writes on the not so heroic Bahindiro king Mibambwe who pretended to offer reconciliation to the hutu king Mashira of Nduga by offering his daughter NYIRANTOBWA and asks the hand of the daughter of Mashira, BWIZA, for his son Gahindiro. During the party that was arranged Mashira and all his sons were killed. That's how the rule of the Ababanda ended. A wedding that reminds us of the Saint-Barthélemy massacre in France that decapitated the leaders of French Calvinism.

Digital Congo, which I would call 'Kabila PR', suggests Kigali is playing a similar game with the tutsi community in eastern-congo today when it claims Kigali actually supports the beheading of the tutsi community leadership in Congo through these international arrest warrants.

Obama knows the truth about Congo

Congolese refugees in Rwanda, May 2012. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports that the number of internally displaced people (IDP) within Congo’s own borders rose from 1.7 million to more than 2 million between the end of December and the end of March and that most of this increase is in the two eastern provinces of North and South Kivu, neighboring Uganda and Rwanda. – Photo: A. Bronee, UNHCR

As president of the United States and commander-in-chief, Obama could begin to build consensus for peace and justice in Congo, the heart of Africa, simply by speaking the truth in his own legislation. It’s unlikely that he will because it would shock and alarm his handlers and funders, like so many things that Obama’s former or current supporters have imagined he could do. But the text of the legislation stands on its own, with Sen. Obama’s name on it. It includes essential elements of the truth in 11 years of U.N. investigations referred to in this KPFA Evening News report.

Read more:  http://sfbayview.com/2012/obama-could-end-congos-human-catastrophe/#.T9H9-nW7lg0.blogger

The End of Counterinsurgency In Congo

In retrospect we might soon say that the article 'Bosco 2012: While We Hunt Kony, Another Indicted War Criminal Lives a Life of Leisure' by Tony Gambino and Lisa Shannon published in the New York Times march 14 signaled the beginning of the end of counterinsurgency operations that have been going on in Congo for over a decade.

Offcourse, it's still too soon to declare victory, at the same time it's just as premature to declare 'the end of counterinsurgency' as George Friedman did this week. While largely ignored in this debate on the effectiveness of 'counterinsurgency', the Congolese army and United Nations peacekeeping forces have been waging one of the largest and longest counterinsurgency operations in the world.

The support for Bosco Ntaganda & the M23 mutinee, both in actions AND rhetoric (often overlooked!), by Rwanda's current regime reveals the weak relationship between these insurgents and the Congolese people in Kivu which is counterinsurgency’s Achillies’ heel. Supposed lack of political integration as driver for this insurgency only surfaced the day Congo wanted to take criminal Ntaganda to justice, as Muanacongo summarizes succinctly here:

'We have never heard of grievances or (so called March 23 agreements) when Ntanganda and Makenga were the heads of “Amani leo”.'

What do the Presidents of Congo and Rwanda want? Simon Allison does a good job answering the first half (I disagree with Philippe Biyoya), Séni Dabo struggles with the second half of this puzzle.
To understand what Paul Kagame wants we should listen to what he says, starting with his speech in West Point march 2010 in which he contrasted the response to the 9/11 attacks in New York and the genocide in Rwanda and pointed to the 'need to enhance international response, solidarity and cooperation, so that international threats carry the same weight and meaning to all countries irrespective of which interests are at stake and not only when the interests of powerful nations are threatened.'

The true meaning of these words became clear when in april he declared 'Rwandan exiled officials are like excreted human waste' and April 25th 2010 in a speech in Rwanda's Parliament he stated he "would crush opponents like flies with a hammer,” which, was a direct threat to critics and dissidents abroad and at home. In june exiled general Faustin Kayumba Nyamwasa survived an assassination attempt by RPF operatives.  Charles Onyango-Obbo further explained Paul Kagame's West Point speech july 8th 2010:

'the government in Kigali would not need to deny or apologise for trying to kill a terrorist.'

In may 2011 Joseph Rwagatare confirmed this reading of Paul Kagame's West Point speech in an article in The New Times claiming:

"The criminal quartet and other unsavoury characters to whom they are allied in a terrorist enterprise will soon find out that the jungles of foreign countries and villas in upmarket areas of foreign capitals are not very safe. They can run and hide, but will run out of options and then their actions will catch up with them. If Osama bin Laden could speak now, he would tell them that."

 A cynical and expedient application of James Madison's universal truth:

'that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad'

Paul Kagame used the visit by United States Assistant Secretary for African Affairs Jonnie Carson  october 22 to reaffirm his commitment to the stated principles in his West Point speech and at the same time correcting Jendayi Frazer who had claimed just a month earlier:

"that the problems in eastern Congo today are not Rwandan, they’re Congolese"  

The calculated assassination of Charles Ingabire a few days before Paul Kagame arrived in Kampala in december 2011 to receive the 'Life Achievement Award' for his contribution towards “the empowerment of youth in Africa” was meant to send a message to Rwandans abroad, as explained by Dr. Theogene Rudasingwa.

When Mitt Romney's current human rights advisor Pierre Prosper, who until recently represented the US in the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination, invited Paul Kagame to speak at Boston College in 2005 he claimed:

'Paul Kagame is a man who has confronted evil . . . and made a difference. The lesson of Rwanda is that we all have a responsibility to one another: to speak out, to condemn, and to act where we can and as we can. And to take inspiration from Kagame's example.'

And..... to spread propaganda & hide evidence when it doesnt fit the narrative!
(see on Pierre Prosper's image laundering efforts also page 138 of 'The UN Security Council Ad Hoc Rwanda Tribunal: international justice or juridicially-constructed "victor's impunity"?' by Prof. Peter Erlinder).

To summarize what Paul Kagame wants one example sums it up best. On the day (words gain their specific meaning through context and timing) that the assassinated vice-president of Rwandan Green Party, André Kagwa Rwisereka, was burried, Paul Kagame did not express his regret or extended his condolences as did Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza. No, he made this widely published and ambiguous statement:

"My job has not been to create an opposition, my job is to create the environment where legitimate things can happen."

Propaganda Wars Over Congo

Kambale Musavuli was interviewed on Al-Jazeera may 18th 2012 in which he gave his views on what the root cause of the conflict in Congo is:

'The root cause of the conflict has not been adressed....Bosco Ntaganda and the CNDP are proxy forces supported by ...specifically Rwanda. A regional solution will require three steps. One of them will be pressure on Rwanda. As in 2008, integration of Bosco Ntaganda was due to pressure by the international community, specifically Sweden and the Netherlands. The second step, there needs to be an inter-Rwandan dialogue. The issue in Congo comes from a political problem in Rwanda. The last one is mostly from the Congolese side. Having support of democratic institutions where the Congolese can adress a conflict as we see now.'

May 22 Matthew Russell Lee (Innercitypress) asked Roger Meece about Rwanda's support of M23 rebels in Congo. Roger Meece did not answer the question. However, an internal UN report accuses Rwanda of complicity in supplying weapons and soldiers to the M23 rebels in DR Congo as we learned may 28th on the BBC. MONUSCO's chief for Goma in Eastern Congo Hiroute Guebre-Sellassie told BBC on camera of defectors from M23 who say they were recruited to fight in the Rwandan army but in reality deployed in Congo to fight the FARDC. This include at least one child soldier.

Laura Seaye claimed on twitter may 30:

“People tell us to our faces that all Kinyarwanda speakers are enemies,” explains Wivine Furaha, 36, who fled ...Masisi with her 4 children. They tell us to go back to Rwanda. But we are Congolese. If our neighbors cannot accept that, how can there be peace?”

And adds:

'In that, Wivine Furaha sums up the problem in North Kivu.' http://bit.ly/KZjj2E'

Linking to a may 29th article by Jon Rosen.

Can Kambale & Laura both be right?

May 31st Jonathan Mboyo Esole @JMEsole offered the following comment on this same article by Jon Rosen in a tweet that brings together both aspects:

#DRC Congolese Tutsi minorities are exploited by criminals claiming to have their best interest at heart. http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/11995/ntaganda-mutiny-shatters-tenuous-peace-in-eastern-congo        

The false peace in North-Kivu since march 23 #m23 2009 ended when April 11, Kabila officially made Ntaganda a wanted man and may 6 M23 rebel mutinee was oficially created. Defections had allready started beginning of april.

Rwanda's 'New Times' reporter Edmund Kagire continues Kigali's typical 'have my cake and eat it too' strategy by voicing support for Bosco Ntaganda june 2:

'Defiant Gen. Ntaganda speaks on #BBC, says he is not bothered by #ICC and will not stop cause to protect his people'

The BBC report on the internal UN report prompted a reaction by UK MP Eric Joyce on twitter may 31th as well:

@kambale What's the point of being maniacally anti-Paul Kagame? It's the DRC president and others who are stealing the resources.

@kambale Been following you for ages! It's great stuff, on the whole. But the DRC probs lie first and foremost within the DRC, surely? e

Eric Joyce, who once thought his loyalty to Tony Blair concerning the Iraq war would win him a ministerial job, has ended up chairing the Party Parliamentary Group on the Great Lakes Region of Africa. 

November 18 2011 Eric Joyce published documents, discussed on Congo Siasa at the time, to support the above repeated accusation that 'the DRC president and others ....are stealing the resources'.

The accusations against Joseph Kabila are used, in these tweets by Eric Joyce, to justify UK's longstanding  consensus concerning great lakes politics and to deflect criticism from their regional 'good friend'. This obviously puts in doubt the value of the claims in this november 2011 report. Eric Joyce, who represents UK's all-to-familiar 'Tony' consensus on Rwanda, clearly doesn't agree with Kambale's definition of the root cause of Congo's conflict.

A similar tactic, pretending the regional dimension doesn't exist, has been used by Belgian foreign affairs minister Karel de Gucht, political friend of former Belgian prime-minister Verhofstadt, in june 2005 when he attacked Kabila as incompetent. Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson continued on the same path:

'Eastern Congo is both a tragedy and a lesson in political philosophy. Human beings need bread and justice and freedom. And all are made possible by orderly, responsible government.'

Kigali strategy to make another extra-parliamentary secret deal with Kabila would fit perfectly in the carefully crafted narrative of the 'incompetent weak stealing president' (Kabila) versus inspiring leadership' (Kagame). Rwanda's western backers/admirers/fanatics won't admit it, but would probably love this outcome.

In the meantime longtime staunch RPF supporter/fanatic Linda Melvern & Maria Malagardis continue their efforts in a losing fight concerning the 1994 terrorist attack on Habyarimana's Presidential aircraft.

Let's not jump the gun, as  Paul Quilès, former president of the commission that investigated the French role in Rwanda. emphasized in a june first interview. Over the weekend former Rwandan minister of Defense James Gasana (minister between july 1990 and july 1993) and two Belgian army officers dismissed the claims by Linda Melvern about FAR's posession of missiles in 1994.

James Gasana points out that the RPF had surface-to-air missiles and personel trained to use them. Which they did three times with success to take down an airplane and two helicopters of the Rwandan Army. On 7 october 1990 the RPF launched a surface-to-air missile SAM-7 which killed commander Ruterana and colonel Lt Havugimana. On october 23 1990 the RPF launched a surface-to-air missile SAM-7 which downed a helicopter in Nyakayaga. The captain Javan Tuyiringire burned to death. February 13 1993 the RPF launched a surface-to-air missile SAM-7 and took down a helicopter 'Ecure'.

Let's see if mainstream UK press will now do an article on Linda Melvern and ask her how and why she suddenly 'discovered' this supposed 'new fact'. Robert Kayinamura made a pertinent observation when he wrote june 1 2012:

 'This "chance" discovery could spell the end of Linda Melvern not just as a credible journalist but as a journalist, period (or militant journalist), and possibly the end of Maria Malagardis as well. Are these 2 women fully aware of what's at stake here? We're talking about an event - the terrorist shooting down of the presidential airplane on April 6, 1994 - where 2 presidents died and which touched off the killing of millions of people. The killing continues to this day. Could it be possible that Linda Melvern herself planted this document at the U.N. archives? Well, she will have some answering to do.'