By Emmanuel Neretse

The difference between two individuals sometimes resides in their opposing ways of addressing their thoughts or even their realities. There are those who are passive to make effective sense of what is happening; there are those prone to action once a seemingly clear picture of their environment has formed in their mind. This can be true on individual or country levels.

Emmanuel Neretse, author of the following article I translated from French, explains a particular reality from someone who has closely analyzed the timing of the Rwandan president Paul Kagame’s wars. As the writer highlights, there is an apparent pattern. For example, the attack that the Rwandan funded CNDP of Nkundabatware which was stopped at the outskirts of Goma in November 2008 when Barack Obama was being first elected, was not a military offensive not planned in consideration of regional and international events of the time.

The occupation of Goma in November 2012 by the again Rwandan funded M23 occurred at the time when and following a military offensive organized during US elections where Barack Obama was seeking his second term in office. What Emmanuel Neretse points out refers to other war ventures of Paul Kagame that were initiated at different periods of the recent history of the region, not by hazard, but according to particularly selected moments of world’s affairs.

It’s always when the global general public is focused elsewhere that RPF of Paul Kagame strikes.

On June 11, 2014, serious armed incidents occurred on the Rwandan-Congolese border, 25 km from the provincial capital of North Kivu. The Rwandan government announced that it had pushed back Congolese soldiers who had entered its territory and killed five of them. DRC government, meanwhile, speaks of one Congolese soldier captured by the Rwandan army on Congolese territory and was subsequently executed. This had been then followed by an exchange of gunfire and artillery shelling between the two sides continued the next day on June 12.

Here is the hic: the Football World Cup begins in Brazil on June 12 and for weeks, the world will have its eyes and ears fixed on Latin America. This World event will then overshadow all others, even more dramatic as the war that troublemakers will lead quietly and almost without camera and in private. So if Paul Kagame harbored intentions to conduct an nth war in Congo, the timing is perfect because it would not be the first time he sees the football World Cup as an opportunity to launch his wars away from international media presently focused on another major event, as we shall see.

1990

In August 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and conquered it in a few days. At the time, the international community and the world will be preoccupied by this event that it looked like the world had stopped everywhere and nothing was happening, especially in Africa. Well, this is the moment Tutsi elements of the Ugandan army and operating under the rebel grouping of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) army to invade Rwanda. At the regional level, the timing attack of the attack corresponds to the period when the leaders of the concerned States (Museveni and Habyarimana) are in New York during the General Assembly of the United Nations and the World Summit for Childhood.

[US are at the time led by the Republican George Bush father. We are at the end of the Cold War. Communism as a political and economic system has been overtaken by Capitalism. US see itself as the remaining and unique global power around. And because of that new configuration, a remodeling of zones of influence of the past enters in full swing, particularly in Africa – editor’s emphasis].

1991

January 17, 1991, after months of consultation and communication in all directions, the United States launched the “Desert Storm” operation to remove Saddam Hussein from Kuwait. The eyes of the world were focused on the impressive “air strikes” and the world will hold its breath until February 1991. This is the moment chosen by the astute Paul Kagame, who in the meantime has become commander in chief of the “Tutsi rebellion” to undertake a spectacular raid on the town of Ruhengeri. The tactical impact of the raid would remain insignificant because the city was not even occupied. The attackers who had just had enough time to open the (regional) jail, to make targeted killings in the city, emptying bank vaults and take some hostages to the Virunga National Park where they had come from. On the contrary, this action allowed Paul Kagame perk up the morale of his fighters who, after the debacle of Mutara in October 1990 had began to doubt the strategic vision of their leaders who had led this adventure setting them for nowhere, and some had started deserting the front materialized by forests along the Rwandan-Ugandan border. At the same time, the RPF Kagame put its hands on some Hutu political prisoners serving their sentences in the Ruhengeri prison and they would now serve as evidence that the rebellion was not exclusively Tutsi.

1992

In that year, the world’s attention is drawn to the situation in Somalia, where chaos and famine are prevailing and the United States have just been humiliated by insurgents who have exhibited to the world GI’s bodies trailed behind pick-up vehicles in the streets of Mogadishu. The United States itself, the presidential campaign that will culminate in the election of Democrat Bill Clinton in November is in full swing. This is the time that Paul Kagame chose to try to occupy a portion of the territory in Rwanda; in the process he displaces thousands of farmers and causes death for other hundreds among them. The offensive will be successful, and the RPF was able to show to the world that this time it had its headquarters in Rwanda [Mulindi] and therefore, one should not link it to Uganda, its historical background base. But the international community will never know that the rebel group managed to move to Mulindi by committing the worst crimes of war and against humanity. The world was distracted by something else.

1993

In early 1993, a bomb exploded at the World Trade Center in New York. Sadness and anger are at their high height and security services are on alert mode. International news is dominated by the end of Czechoslovakia and the birth of two separate states: Czech Republic and Slovakia. This is the time that Paul Kagame chose to leave the negotiating table in Arusha, breaking the cease-fire and launching a major offensive that has allowed it to establish a buffer zone in Byumba and Ruhengeri. It was after this flagrant violation of the cease-fire that nearly one million people are displaced driven from their property by the same RPF; they came to live at the outskirts of Kigali in makeshift shelters ironically baptized then the “armored”. This humanitarian catastrophe seemed to have surprised NGOs and the international community as if they suddenly discovered that Kagame was not leading a clean war as his effective propaganda machine has made everyone around the world to believe. But it was too late!

1994

In 1994, the world celebrates the end of apartheid in South Africa and the victory of the ANC of Nelson Mandela now president of a democratic and multiracial South Africa. In the international media Africa is at that time perceived through that idyllic image of a new dancing, tolerant and promising South Africa. Another significant international event: US organize the football World Cup and the press worldwide is mobilized to meet this global event organized, moreover, by the only super power of the ending 20th century. This is the time that Paul Kagame chooses to lead the final assault in his conquest of Rwanda, adventure he started four years before. On the evening of April 6, 1994, he assassinates President Habyarimana; he orders out his troops from their quarters at the Rwandan parliament building; he orders his commandos infiltrated in Kigali for months to carry on their mission and he launches a military offensive along the whole front of the entire border with Uganda where columns of heavily armed battalions starting from Ugandan army barracks converge towards Kigali. Within three months, Paul Kagame becomes the master of the whole Rwanda emptied of more than half of its population, but that does not bother him! On 17 July 1994, he proclaims a government in which he is the strong man. The world will only discover a posteriori the slaughter that will have been the incisive war of Paul Kagame to conquer the country away from the camera of the world media.

2014 …

The kickoff of the football World Cup is given on 12 June 2014 in Brazil with the opening game between Brazil and Croatia. The whole world will now be watching this global festival of football for at least a month. But at the same time, since June 11, Rwanda has launched hostilities against the DRC in attacking the Armed Forces of this country and the Rwandan army says proudly having killed a half-dozen on the first day! This incident occurring in the publicized process of demobilization of the Hutu rebels of the FDLR who announced their abandonment of armed struggle can only cause concerns. Indeed, the regime of Paul Kagame has always used the pretext of the existence of the FDLR to justify its recurrent occupations of DRC, creation and support for multiple rebellions that have destabilized Eastern DRC, as well as to enjoy impunity for crimes committed in Rwanda and the DRC by the Tutsi army of Paul Kagame. It is feared that, as usual, Paul Kagame might have initiated on this 11 June 2014, on the eve of the football World Cup football, an event that will hold the attention of the world and have eclipsed all others for weeks: a new war against the DRC and of which the objective assessment of its consequences will only be known far into the future.

Last but not least! Paul Kagame has organized the assassination of General Kayumba Nyamwasa in South Africa when the country organizing the football World Cup football in 2010. And the assassination of Colonel Patrick Karegeya was operated in the same country during the end of year 2013 holiday season. In both cases, the world was preoccupied with something else.

The Congolese government should know that the austere Paul Kagame, far from being distracted by the World Cup, taking advantage of this period of media blackout on the rest of the events around the world to launch his wars or acts of aggression. Rwanda, of which he is ruler for 20 years, didn’t he conquer it during the football World Cup held in US in 1994 when the world was distracted as this is the case this month of June 2014? Rwandans have learned it at their own expense. You have been warned!

Source: Site de documentation et d’informations socio-politiques sur le Rwanda – http://www.musabyimana.net/lire/article/rwanda-le-choix-du-moment-par-le-fpr-pour-lancer-ses-guerres/index.html

The pending critical question that pops up in mind is this one: Knowing the timing of these world’s events, what can be done by concerned authorities to prevent Paul Kagame from striking during those moments? How can he be stopped from for example assassinating Etienne Tshisekedi, around the end of the football World Cup, meaning early July, to cause chaos and mayhem in DRC, if APARECO’s intelligence allegations came to be true about the presence of Rwandan special forces already stationed in Kinshasa? As they say, the best defense is the attack. It is never late to learn. Even from one’s enemies.

From climate change to Crimea, the natural gas industry is supreme at exploiting crisis for private gain – what I call the shock doctrine.Naomi Klein

A large field of fracking sites in a Colorado valley. ‘The industry’s singular solution to the climate crisis is to dramatically expand an extraction process that releases massive amounts of climate-destabilising methane.’ Photograph: Ted Wood/Aurora Photos/Corbis

The way to beat Vladimir Putin is to flood the European market with fracked-in-the-USA natural gas, or so the industry would have us believe. As part of escalating anti-Russian hysteria, two bills have been introduced into the US Congress – one in the House of Representatives (H.R. 6), one in the Senate (S. 2083) – that attempt to fast-track liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, all in the name of helping Europe to wean itself from Putin’s fossil fuels, and enhancing US national security.

According to Cory Gardner, the Republican congressman who introduced the House bill, “opposing this legislation is like hanging up on a 911 call from our friends and allies”. And that might be true – as long as your friends and allies work at Chevron and Shell, and the emergency is the need to keep profits up amid dwindling supplies of conventional oil and gas.

For this ploy to work, it’s important not to look too closely at details. Like the fact that much of the gas probably won’t make it to Europe – because what the bills allow is for gas to be sold on the world market to any country belonging to the World Trade Organisation.

Or the fact that for years the industry has been selling the message that Americans must accept the risks to their land, water and air that come with hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in order to help their country achieve “energy independence”. And now, suddenly and slyly, the goal has been switched to “energy security”, which apparently means selling a temporary glut of fracked gas on the world market, thereby creating energy dependencies abroad.

And most of all, it’s important not to notice that building the infrastructure necessary to export gas on this scale would take many years in permitting and construction – a single LNG terminal can carry a $7bn price tag, must be fed by a massive, interlocking web of pipelines and compressor stations, and requires its own power plant just to generate energy sufficient to liquefy the gas through super-cooling. By the time these massive industrial projects are up and running, Germany and Russia may well be fast friends. But by then few will remember that the crisis in Crimea was the excuse seized upon by the gas industry to make its longstanding export dreams come true, regardless of the consequences to the communities getting fracked or to the planet getting cooked.

I call this knack for exploiting crisis for private gain the shock doctrine, and it shows no signs of retreating. We all know how the shock doctrine works: during times of crisis, whether real or manufactured, our elites are able to ram through unpopular policies that are detrimental to the majority under cover of emergency. Sure there are objections – from climate scientists warning of the potent warming powers of methane, or local communities that don’t want these high-risk export ports on their beloved coasts. But who has time for debate? It’s an emergency! A 911 call ringing! Pass the laws first, think about them later.

Plenty of industries are good at this ploy, but none is more adept at exploiting the rationality-arresting properties of crisis than the global gas sector.

For the past four years the gas lobby has used the economic crisis in Europe to tell countries like Greece that the way out of debt and desperation is to open their beautiful and fragile seas to drilling. And it has employed similar arguments to rationalise fracking across North America and the United Kingdom.

Now the crisis du jour is conflict in Ukraine, being used as a battering ram to knock down sensible restrictions on natural gas exports and push through a controversial free-trade deal with Europe. It’s quite a deal: more corporate free-trade polluting economies and more heat-trapping gases polluting the atmosphere – all as a response to an energy crisis that is largely manufactured.

Against this backdrop it’s worth remembering – irony of ironies – that the crisis the natural gas industry has been most adept at exploiting is climate change itself.

Never mind that the industry’s singular solution to the climate crisis is to dramatically expand an extraction process in fracking that releases massive amounts of climate-destabilising methane into our atmosphere. Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases – 34 times more powerful at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, according to the latest estimates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And that is over a 100-year period, with methane’s power dwindling over time.

It’s far more relevant, argues the Cornell University biochemist Robert Howarth, one of the world’s leading experts on methane emissions, to look at the impact in the 15- to 20-year range, when methane has a global-warming potential that is a staggering 86-100 times greater than carbon dioxide. “It is in this time frame that we risk locking ourselves into very rapid warming,” he said on Wednesday.

And remember: you don’t build multibillion-dollar pieces of infrastructure unless you plan on using them for at least 40 years. So we are responding to the crisis of our warming planet by constructing a network of ultra-powerful atmospheric ovens. Are we mad?

Not that we know how much methane is actually released by drilling and fracking and all their attendant infrastructure. Even while the natural gas industry touts its “lower than coal!” carbon dioxide emissions, it has never systematically measured its fugitive methane leaks, which waft from every stage of the gas extraction, processing, and distribution process – from the well casings and the condenser valves to the cracked pipelines under Harlem neighbourhoods. The gas industry itself, in 1981, came up with the clever pitch that natural gas was a “bridge” to a clean energy future. That was 33 years ago. Long bridge. And the far bank still nowhere in view.

And in 1988 – the year that the climatologist James Hansen warned Congress, in historic testimony, about the urgent problem of global warming – the American Gas Association began to explicitly frame its product as a response to the “greenhouse effect”. It wasted no time, in other words, selling itself as the solution to a global crisis that it had helped create.

The industry’s use of the crisis in Ukraine to expand its global market under the banner of “energy security” must be seen in the context of this uninterrupted record of crisis opportunism. Only this time many more of us know where true energy security lies. Thanks to the work of top researchers such as Mark Jacobson and his Stanford team, we know that the world can, by the year 2030, power itself entirely with renewables. And thanks to the latest, alarming reports from the IPCC, we know that doing so is now an existential imperative.

This is the infrastructure we need to be rushing to build – not massive industrial projects that will lock us into further dependency on dangerous fossil fuels for decades into the future. Yes, these fuels are still needed during the transition, but more than enough conventionals are on hand to carry us through: extra-dirty extraction methods such as tar sands and fracking are simply not necessary. As Jacobson said in an interview just this week: “We don’t need unconventional fuels to produce the infrastructure to convert to entirely clean and renewable wind, water and solar power for all purposes. We can rely on the existing infrastructure plus the new infrastructure [of renewable generation] to provide the energy for producing the rest of the clean infrastructure that we’ll need … Conventional oil and gas is much more than enough.”

Given this, it’s up to Europeans to turn their desire for emancipation from Russian gas into a demand for an accelerated transition to renewables. Such a transition – to which European nations are committed under theKyoto protocol – can easily be sabotaged if the world market is flooded with cheap fossil fuels fracked from the US bedrock. And indeedAmericans Against Fracking, which is leading the charge against the fast-tracking of LNG exports, is working closely with its European counterparts to prevent this from happening.

Responding to the threat of catastrophic warming is our most pressing energy imperative. And we simply can’t afford to be distracted by the natural gas industry’s latest crisis-fuelled marketing ploy.

The guardian April 10, 2014

Ngo Kabarebe yaba abyumva kimwe n’umuhanzi Butera Jeanne aka Knowless…ntawe udakama izo aragiye!?.