Category Archives: Genocide prevention

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More coffee with do the trick

Sam Bee needed more coffee before her bogus segment on Rwanda

Coffee! It’s what’s for dinner!

No, not really. Dinner around here is usually salmon, sweet potatoes and veggies but I do consume a lot of coffee.

People always ask, “What’s new?” I always want to respond, “Not much!” but that isn’t true right now. So, what’s doin’ in Stony Brook?

First, I heard that Samantha Bee did a segment in Rwanda with a focus on conservation and how they did with refugees. I wrote about that for Medium. The Human Rights Foundation had this to say:

On Monday, the Human Rights Foundation (HRF) sent a letter to television host and executive producer, Samantha Bee, expressing concerns over how Rwanda’s dictatorial regime will likely exploit her show’s segment, “Rwandans and the UNHCR Are Treating Refugees with Empathy,” to whitewash its long history of grave atrocities against refugees and refugee camps, following the country’s 1994 genocide, as well as its ongoing deadly campaign of espionage, extrajudicial executions, renditions, and intimidation against Rwandan dissident refugees living abroad.

The Human Rights Foundation.

I used to really like Samantha Bee. She was great on The Daily Show. She did a segment about someone I wrote for and I was offended that she lumped the website I wrote for in with a bunch of satire sites (I do write satire but try to keep a firewall between satire and general opinion). I haven’t watched her show recently. I do think it is incredibly irresponsible to do a piece on Rwanda about how they deal with refugees without looking at all the people who have been displaced (or worse) by President Paul Kagame.

From critic to being complicit

The view Bee gave of Rwanda was not even close to accurate and the segment will be used by the government as propaganda. Nice job, Sam! You went from being a critic to being complicit.

In other coffee needing news, I have several shows coming up that will be great.

  • Friday, August 6 @ 8 pm (doors open at 6). Governor’s Comedy Club — the Lil Room. Levittown, NY.
  • Saturday, August 14 @ 5:30 pm. Greenwich Village Comedy Club. NYC (this is my favorite venue!).
  • Friday, August 27 @ 9 pm. Clyde’s (used to be Barton’s Place). Miller Place, NY.

Can you help keep me employed?

Ok. I am asking. I work for several non-profits. We work to get companies to not make money from or give money to governments that commit genocide and other crimes against humanity, we are also working to support the people of Myanmar in their struggles post the coup in February and to stop the genocide against the Rohingya. We are also working to free Paul Rusesabagina (Hotel Rwanda).This is important work but we need your help. If you can, please donate here.

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Will you help us end genocide?

Genocide is all around us but we can stop it

If you are like most people, you probably don’t think about genocide a whole lot. In fact, when the Pew Research Center looked into it, the general, American knowledge of the Holocaust is depressing.

According to the survey of almost 11,000 Americans, 69% said the Holocaust happened between 1930 and 1950. One in 10 people thought it took place between 1910 and 1930, and 2% answered between 1890 and 1910. One in 100 people thought it was later than second world war, answering 1950-1970; and 18% did not know or gave no answer.

The Guardian

After World War II, there were lots of calls of, “Never Again.” The problem is the world didn’t really mean it. Bosnia. Rwanda. Darfur. All happened after World War II. Today, Genocide Watch has alerts for 20 different countries.

Moreover, companies today are still making money from genocide and other mass atrocities. Just about every company that makes athletic clothing uses cotton from the Xinjiang region of China. This is where more than one million Uyghurs have been placed in concentration camps. Let me repeat that. Today, in 2021, more than a million people are in concentration camps in China.

Head south from China and you will find yourself in Myanmar. Not only has the Muslim, Rohingya minority been persecuted for years but in February, the military arrested the recently, democratically elected government and took over the nation. Since then, military forces have killed 914 people. Meanwhile, companies like Chevron and Harry Winston (owned by Swatch) continue to do business with the military, enriching it and allowing it to continue its crimes against humanity.

What can I do about genocide?

No Business with Genocide (NBWG) is a nonprofit based in Washington, DC. It puts pressure on companies to stop funding or profiting from genocide. Its work led to Kirin Beer cutting all ties with the Myanmar military. It lobbies national, state, and local governments to pass resolutions condemning genocide and pledging not to use taxpayer dollars to fund it. Just last month, Gainesville, Florida passed such a resolution. This is also a way to educate people about the problem and to get a dialogue going.

Today, I am asking for your help.

NBWG is running a summer fundraising drive. Donations are tax-deductible. Your support will allow the organization to keep doing its important work.

PS. This is not just an issue for other countries. It can happen in the U.S., too.

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27 years ago today, the Rwandan genocide began

Paul Rusesabagina with his daughters Carine and Anaise Kanimba

Twenty-seven years ago, one of the worst genocides since the Holocaust was perpetrated in Rwanda. Within a matter of weeks, at least 800,000 people were murdered.

Last year, Paul Rusesabagina was kidnapped and taken to Rwanda, where he was arrested. Today, as President Paul Kagame oversees reenactments of that horrible time, Rusesabagina sits in jail. He is on trial for a host of charges including terrorism and genocide denial. His real crime is criticizing Kagame.

I have been working with some other people to secure Rusesabagina’s release. If you are interested in helping, there are several ways to do that. Here are a few:

Some new articles have been released:

Here’s an older post I wrote on this.

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This is one reason I do not “trust in the Lord”

twitter trump jesus lord

Today, I got up and did what has become a part of my normal morning routine, I checked Twitter to see what the most recent craziness has come out of the White House. This morning, I would not help but notice that “Trust in the LORD” is trending. Now, I know that the United States is one of the most church going counties on the planet but this image was just too much for me.

twitter trump jesus lord

This is from: https://twitter.com/nvrggivup

Now I know that when most people think of Donald Trump, they think about Jesus. I mean, who can forget that part of the Bible when our lord and savior extolls the virtues of “grabbing women by the pussy?” I know that was the part that kept me reading. That’s what it’s all about: rating, both for Christ and the Tweeter in Chief.

But then I was reading through some of the tweets telling me to “trust in the Lord” and while I am a big believer in karma, when people get too religious my mind goes back to Rwanda and the 1994 genocide. This is not because of its brutality and efficacy, but because of the role the church played. Like most of Africa, Rwanda is also a very church loving country.

The Ntarama Catholic church sits about an hour from Kigali. When the president’s plane went down in April 1994, people who lived near the church were scared. On April 15, the militia, known as the Interhamwe (those who fight together), ambushed area. Thousands took refuge in the church. At least five thousand people were butchered there.

I am not sure where the ideas that Donald Trump has ever given a thought to Jesus or the role of the Bible in his life has anything to do with the slaughter of innocent people in a Rwandan Catholic church but I have to just see the hypocrisy in both ideas. Trump has been divorced three times (though I don’t personally see an issue with that), has never seen marriage as a reason to not have sex with whomever and basically thinks that he has a right to do whatever he wants to anyone he wants. Take money from small businesses? Force them out of business? Sure, if it helps the Trump bottom line, why not? While I am no expert on the Bible of Jesus but if we were all wearing, “what would Jesus do?” bracelets, I am pretty sure sexual assault and fraud are not part of his repertoire.

And then the hypocrisy of the “trust in the Lord.” I get it. People like to believe in something and I do see the value in religion. The American civil rights movement got a lot of help and its start in churches. Having said that, blind allegiance to anything is just stupid.

But maybe the real connection between the Rwandan genocide, the stupid trending Twitter topic and Trump is that we seem to be on a path to genocide here and it is being led by people who claim to love Jesus. If that doesn’t scare you, it should.

 

 

https://vimeo.com/19089604

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When we said “never again,” we were kidding

“One death is a tragedy, one million is a statistic,” Joseph Stalin

Today is the anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide.  In the span of 100 days, 800,000 people were murdered with machetes.   That is the official death toll but it could be as high as one million.  I wrote about that here.  As this is the anniversary, I am watching Hotel Rwanda.  I have been lucky enough to have met Paul and Tatiana Rusesbagina and they inspire me every day.

A lifetime ago, I climbed Kilimanjaro.  After the climb we went to Odulvai Gorge, the site where the first human footprints were found.  Looking over the gorge gave me this great sense of connectivity — we are all from there.

One of my heroes is astrophysicist, Neil de Grasse Tyson. He has said, “We are all stardust.”  I love that idea and it sits at the heart of my atheism.  Looking up at the stars gives me the same sense that looking over that gorge did.

One of the advance trips I did for President Clinton was to Norway.  He was there to commemorate the life of Yitzak Rabin (side note: when he was assasinated I was in an Emily’s List press training, name drop alert: Chuck Todd was in my group, when they told us the news, it took my brain about ten minutes to comprehend them, it was weird, I knew all the words but could not grasp what they meant).  I watched Clinton give a speech about our DNA.  We share 99.99 percent with every other person on the planet.  This is what makes DNA evidence so powerful in criminal cases.  During that trip, Clinton met with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership. Like soap in the shower, peace in that part of the world often feels so close only to be lost in a short time.

We are unique and that is special.  When we celebrate our uniqueness, we celebrate our species.  When we use the tiny spaces that make us unique to divide us, we all suffer.  We are in this boat together.

Hutu, Tutsi.  Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist (or atheist).  We are the same.

Paul Kagame led the revolt that ended the Rwandan genocide but he is not the savior he has been made out to be.  He didn’t really end the conflict, he just moved it next door to the Congo.  Dear President Kagame: please learn from Nelson Mandela.  Step down and prove you have created a real democracy.  Learn from George Washington who stepped down after one term.

And to end on a happier note, watch this.