This is moving. From Samantha Power’s twitter feed. The US ambassador to the UN visited the memorial to the Rwanda genocide in Kigali two weeks ago and broke down afterward, speaking to local media (and posted by this human rights organization). Note the humility in her comments, putting herself in the company of citizens and churchgoers. Excerpts:
My name is Samantha Power, I’m the US ambassador to the United Nations. I have just come out of the memorial, and I honestly need time to recover. This is very soon to be talking to all of you… This is my third time visiting Rwandan memorials, it is almost 20 years after the genocide, and the power of not only what happened here in 1994 but the strength of the Rwandan people as they seek to move forward is immensely moving to me and to my colleagues. I am here as part of a mission from the United Nations Security Council, and of course we all know what the United Nations failed to do back in 1994 for the Rwandan people. But the international community is determined to stand with the Rwandan people in the same way that our guides today have, who were themselves 13-year-old boys at the time of the genocide– I’m sorry– and they tell their stories so that diplomats like me, journalistis, citizens, churchgoers, everyone in the world can know what happened here so that it never happens again in Rwanda and it never happens again anywhere else in the world… Nobody who comes to this memorial site is ever the same when they leave. People who come to this site dedicate themselves with new passion… to the broader cause of preventing genocide forevermore.
Power, who made her name writing about genocide, has of course defended militarist policies in the Middle East. I went to Power’s feed seeing if she had anything to say about her mentor on Middle East issues, Shmuley Boteach, countenancing Sheldon Adelson’s call for Obama to strike Iran with a nuclear weapon. Zilch.
P.S. Boteach reported that Power cried when she met with Israel lobbyists to defend herself from accusations that she doesn’t like Israel.
Update: Good point via Twitter —
@Mondoweiss But her buddy Shmuley Boteach thinks Paul Kagame is just a little good boy. Double standards? Hypocrisy? #vomit
— rashido (@iRashido) October 25, 2013
It would be enough — for me — if she liked Israel and also liked Palestine and also demanded that Israel conduct its occupation in compliance with I/L. Of course she should “like Israel”. Of course.
But that alone is not enough. Not for me. And she should say so to Adelson, Boteach, et al. And she should say — to all Americans — that it is possible to “like Israel” and “like Palestine” and also demand that (both) conduct themselves according to I/L.
In other words, it is not only possible but MANDATORY to walk THIS WALK and chew THIS gum at the same time.
Ms. Powers ought to seek professional help. She is clearly afflicted with a multiple personality disorder. The compassionate aspect is obvious in the video. The hard-nosed bias overflowing with prejudice has been witnessed by many in the course of SP’s performance at the UN.
It behooves us to remember that Rwanda’s capricious division of the population into Hutus and Tutsis was a Belgian idea according to the oldest trick – Divide & Rule – that seldom fails in any colonial conquest, and which phoney divide is still maintained is “free” Rwanda.
As for having had learned from the genocide? Oh, puh-leeze. Rwanda has enthusiastically participated in the ongoing slaughter (6 million to-date) of the Congolese in the DRC. Neither Rice nor Powers have uttered a word about THAT genocide. So much for lessons learned.
” 2010 UN report charged Rwanda’s army with “committing atrocities that could be classified as crimes of genocide.” :
http://blackagendareport.com/content/profitable-genocide-rwanda-and-uganda-annex-eastern-congo
One wonders: why are SP et al., in Rwanda? Is this connected to the expanding presence of Africom? Is this the latest act in the musical chairs farce wherein Powers switched her job for that of Susan Rice, who now reps the US at the UN? Rwanda is one of the African countries that works closely with Africom, now present in 30+ countries of the continent.
Before you let this lachrymose phony off the hook, I will say this for the umpteenth time (done before the archives started at the end of July, 2009).
Samantha Power, in her book on genocide, blamed the Hutus, calling them extremist. She sided with Paul Kagame, the leader of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF). However, HE was the real perpetrator of the genocide. It was the Tutsis who committed the genocide against the Hutus, not the other way around. The movie Hotel Rwanda was a propaganda film.
From the MW archives, Exiled at Home writes:
I wrote:
My brother’s girlfriend called me at enormous expense from Rwanda in April 1994 begging me not to tell anyone because she said she would be killed for spilling the beans–the US backed this slaughter, and so did Medicins Sans Frontieres–and she intimated I could be too.
So let’s put this nonsense to bed. Power is an apologist for Paul Kagame and Boteach/Adelson.
I still don’t trust her after she promoted a United States invasion of Israel.
Power-Hungry is nothing but a feel-good liberal. No real principles, just the wish to pose as someone honorable. She would not be there where she is now if she had not buckled to the Jewish lobby or had published a book that does not paint the US in such a rosy way.