To be honest when I first wrote the first draft of this article (almost two years ago — I submitted it to various academic journals and it was rejected) I wasn’t following the US’s role in Africa too closely. I am researching an article about Africa and democracy manipulators at the moment, but you point is important as it is critical to be sceptical of all sources, especially those that are rarely challenged in the mainstream.

At present I am writing a critique of Jane Goodall, which should be published shortly, but I thought people who still visit this excellent blog would also be interested in my most recent article:

The Project For A New American Humanitarianism: Olympian Ambitions from Darfur to Tibet and Beijing, Swans, August 25, 2008.
http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/

(Article examines links between neoconservatives, Zionists, and human rights activism.)

The idea that there was a Hutu hate radio campaign against the Tutsi minority is integral to the official history (read western state-sponsored propaganda) that records a genocide against the Tutsi but airbrushes the frequent RPF atrocities against Hutu refugees that long antedate the so-called “genocide”.

This account also thoroughly obscures the role of western elites and NGOs who propagated it in making the “genocide” that is said to have taken place inevitable.

In this absurdly slanted Hollywood-sponsored “Hotel Rwanda” version of the conflict,which owes much to Kagame’s US-trained aptitude for psy-ops and manipulating the international media,the fact that the RPF ran its own hate radio station(MUHABURA)and was assisted in its propaganda effort by Voice of America Kinyarwanda broadcasts that reported the war from a Tutsi perspective is airbrushed entirely.

Moreover RPF/NRA troops had US-supplied portable transmitters that broadcast their messages over the same channel as Hutu radio and spread murderous messages as part of the US/Kagame Big Lie that demonizes and makes fair game of Hutus across the region today.

Barker seems unaware that the US and its lackeys at the UN and the ICTR have suppressed evidence of widespread RPF atrocities during and after the conflict.

They have also destroyed the black box voice recording from the plane brought down by SAM missiles in which Presidents Habyrimana and Ntaryamira of Burundi died in April 1994.This lay hidden in NY UN offices for a decade prior to the UN “discovering” it and promptly handing it over to the US-for safe keeping!

What a shame that this eminent commentator,Barker to wit,seems to have swallowed the very same propaganda his article on Press Freedom so decries!

Boutros-Ghali stated unequivocally that it was the US that bore prime responsibility for what happened in Rwanda and that it was highly likely that the CIA organized the shoot-down operation that triggered the killing that followed.

The use of the term “genocide” is a favourite US charge the US levels against regimes and,in the case of the Hutus,whole populations who stand in the way of the mineral asset-strip in which they are currently engaged across the Great Lakes Region and beyond.

To date up to 7m Africans have died in wars launched by Kagame-directed RPF invasions in the Congo and S.Sudan.

Ugandan diamond exports were unknown until the advent of these invasions since the country possesses none of these minerals.

US corporations along with their RPF/NRA proxies have made millions from the trade in coltan illegally extracted from E.Congo.

Barker might be surprised to learn that in the so-called Tutsi “genocide”,according to Davenport and Stern,250 000 Rwandans died in a ratio of 2 Hutu:1 Tutsi.

When it comes to world misleader Kagame and his Anglo-US sponsors take some beating!

The last two spearheaded the assault on the out-of-favour former client-junta by demanding the regime abandon subsidies and install “market prices”.Protests against the resulting economic hardship suffered by the population bore uncanny resemblances to those that occurred in the colour revolutions in states strategically placed around Russia like Ukraine and Georgia.

The involvement of NED in all cases,as well as in the run-up to the doomed Tiananmen protests in 1989, probably accounts for the similarities.

Democracy Now,for one,are sponsored by democracy manipulators,the Ford Foundation.Such outlets,and leftgatekeepers.com is an invaluable source on these aggregate to what amounts to a controlled opposition,much like the ones sponsored abroad described in Barker’s account.

Prominent establishment leftists in the US like Chomsky,Amy Goodman,Greg Palast,Nation magazine(where the “left wing”of the Democrat party gather),Michael Moore and most of the broadcasters
associated with Air America took a similar line.

Strangely omitted from Barker’s account are NED activities in Afghanistan during the 1980s where with Freedom House both were integral to the Anglo-US support apparatus for the mujahideen.The NED networks in Afghanistan were close to the British intelligence-driven priorities fronted by figures like Lord Bethell,who set up Radio Free Kabul,and Viscount Cranbourne who helped fund Afghanistan Aid(UK)out of Pershawar.

More recently of course NED,beefed up by Bush’s 2004 doubling of its budget,has targeted Nepal wherein there’s been a huge influx of refugees,as a means to foment the resistance to China in neighbouring Tibet and taken part in the colour-coded “revolutions” in Central Asia and the backwaters of Russia.

In Kyrgyzstan vast NED funding for opposition media have,since 2005,the Freedom House printing press and the Kyrgyz language service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as fruit of their labours.

That China is the real target of such revolts seemed confirmed by reports from Bishkek of targeted looting and arson against Turkish and Chinese property the night the Tulip Revolution drove President Akayev from power.The Uyghur minority’s anti-Bejing agenda has obvious appeal for NED.

Partner in NED efforts against China is the Jamestown Foundation where Brzezinski again a leading player.

Lest we forget it was Huntington’s Trilateral Commission study in 1975 on the “crisis of democracy” discerned by US elites at that time that gave birth to what later became NED.The NED operation is now the means by which both Republicans and Democrats can be co-opted into illegal covert operations worldwide.