My image of East Africa will always conjure up the spring of 1994. I was studying photography at Winnipeg’s Technical Vocational High School.
In contrast, 50,000 Tutsi on the other side of the world had gathered at the Murambi Technical School in Rwanda believing they would be safe from machete wielding Hutu Power extremists.
History wasn’t on their side. They were all surrounded, slaughtered, and many buried alive and mummified.
In 1994, Canadian students studied things like photography, auto mechanics and electronics. Rwanda students were either killing or dying in large numbers.
Genocide Memorial – Kigali, Rwanda
Genocide by Machete
The April 6, 1994 assassination of Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana – a Hutu leader who had negotiated a peace deal to share power and welcome back thousands of Tutsi refugees – triggered the start of one hundred days of mass slaughter.
Gangs of young Hutu men – known as the Interahamwe – carried out a genocidal campaign by controlling the radio waves to incite violence, purchasing large quantities of cheap Chinese machetes, and developing kill lists for Tutsi and moderate Hutu.
Rwandan Prime Minister, Agathe Uwilingiyimana was put under the protection of ten Belgian soldiers shortly after the President’s plane was shot from the sky. Those soldiers were part of the United Nations Assistance Mission In Rwanda (UNAMIR) that were monitoring the peace process.
The Interahamwe took a strategic gamble and murdered the prime minister, along with the Belgium peacekeepers. The gamble paid off. Rather than send a larger peace force, the international community withdrew their troops.
Western leaders seem willing to sacrifice troops for resources or regime change that benefit corporate interests, but not to simply preserve life by protecting people and promoting peace.
General Roméo Dallaire, right, with moustache, and other Canadian peacekeepers with children at Amahoro Stadium Kigali, Rwanda, June 1994.
Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire decided to defy orders and remain with other volunteers to bear witness. He did more than that. It’s estimated that his actions saved 32,000 lives by protecting safe zones (Hôtel des Mille Collines, Amahoro Stadium).
There’s no doubt that my pride in Dallaire being Canadian, and my growing interest in human rights, captured my heart and interest with the people of Rwanda.
In all, between 750,000 and 1 million Tutsi and moderate Hutu were exterminated in what is one of the most efficiently orchestrated genocides in history.
Human Rights & Solo Travel
My travel choices appear understandably weird and depressing to many who want to use their vacation to get away from the troubles of life.
Visiting sites where the largest failures of humanity took place is one way I try to maintain my own humanity.
Walking in another’s shoes forces empathy, recognition and respect. This exists beyond the deep connections we all have with each other. Self-interest and preservation should ring alarm bells that the horrors inflicted on any group of people can be inflicted on your group.
Kwibukato 32 – Remembering Genocide in Rwanda
The death of both parents the last few years has really emphasized the importance of using time wisely while my heart and legs still work.
I’m traveling to Rwanda – with a focus on the 1994 genocide. The entire month is known as, ‘Kwibukato’ – a Kinyarwanda word meaning, ‘to remember.’
I’m hopeful that this trip allows me to pay respects to the genocide of the mid-1990s.
Prologue
Rwanda itself has become one of the safest, least corrupt and reconciled nations in Africa.
However, Rwanda continues military engagement with Hutu groups in the eastern Kivu region of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
Rwanda’s role in the wars of Congo is deeply controversial. The bloody wars in the DRC next door have been the world’s bloodiest since WW2 reaching 6 million deaths.
It’s easy to forgive Rwanda for wanting to keep Hutu extremism outside Rwanda. Hutu power escaped into Congo and continued to threaten Tutsi years after the genocide.
Many argue that Rwanda continues to use this as a convenient cover to support rebel factions such as M23, who terrorize civilians as they fight the government of DRC for control of eastern Congo and its vast mineral wealth.
Dian Fossey (1932-1985) released her field work / autobiography— Gorillas in the Mist – in the summer of 1983.
Two years later she’d be murdered in her cabin on Boxing Day of 1985 and buried with her gorillas beneath the volcanos of Rwanda on New Year’s Eve.
Farley Mowat wrote a true biography of Fossey in 1987 with Gorillas in the Mist: The Passion of Dian Fossey.
His book starts fresh using all source material that Fossey used to make her own autobiography. Mowat goes beyond a focus on Apes and weaves together a story of politics, colonialism, racism, lovers, fame, illness, hatred, death and of course – gorillas.
I admit I didn’t know tons about Fossey. However, the list of unexpected facts has some depth:
Botched Illegal Abortion: Fossey’s own medical trauma (a botched abortion and hemorrhage) occurred after a Belgian doctor in Congo left tools in her body. This occurred months after an affair with National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell.
Students, marriages, and clashing theories. One of her best field assistants was Rosamond Stewart – who in the science world was more famous than her actor father, James Stewart. She married another student, Sandy Harcourt, and the couple would become Fossey’s arch nemesis in the fight of the role of science is research vs Fossey becoming police for active conservation.
Whole families slaughtered for infants. Poachers targeted silverbacks to grab babies for zoos—a single raid could wipe out a group. Fossey describes Digit’s murder and the cascade of orphaned gorillas shipped to Europe. If you see a gorilla in zoos of Germany or Netherlands they are often the offspring of entire groups of murdered gorillas.
From observer to enforcer. She began as a researcher and became a self-appointed protector, organizing armed patrols, destroying traps, and confronting poachers head-on.
The colonialist shadow. Her tactics—kidnapping poachers, psychological torment, violent deterrence—were rooted in Western “save the animals” ideology. One chilling passage details stripping a poacher and lashing his genitals with nettles, an act she recounts with unsettling matter-of-factness. She was known for the poor treatment of many of “her Africans” and for making her own decisions that gorillas were superior to the livelihoods of not only poachers but of entire communities who relied on the mountains for cattle grazing.
Max, the electric dildo. Fossey’s New Year’s Eve 1979 spent with a battery-powered device named Max is recounted as a darkly comic, lonely counterpoint to her feral mountain life.
The two year visa was a death warrant: Fossey regularly fought with corrupt park officials. They wanted her to leave Rwanda and never look back. They had the power to hold up visas and regularly used the renewals as ways to frustrate her to leave. Eventually political allies in Rwanda decided to grant her a two year visa eliminating the power of park officials. Mowat argues this was her signed death sentence.
The Trio of Scientists were not Equal: Jane Goodall (chimps) and Biruté Galdikas’s (Orangutans) spent time with Fossey on speaking tours. Fossey struggled getting along and Goodall often played peacemaker. Fossey also struggled paying bills – likely because of her difficult personality. The others in the trio regularly received large grants and support.
Murder by President’s Brother? Mowat makes the argument that Protais Zigiranyirazo – known as Monsieur Zed – a corrupt businessman, was the person who arranged the murder of Fossey. The motive was her interference in the poaching trade. Zed was also the brother of Rwandan President Habyarimana who ruled Rwanda from 1973 to 1994. This is the same Hutu president who was assassinated when his plane was shot down – known as the official start of the genocide.
Trump’s second-term win was the result of a populist coalition of conservatives wearing MAGA hats who promoted their movement as ‘America First’.
That catch-all term casts a wide-net that describes many policies including protectionist tariffs, domestic crackdowns on vulnerable populations (American or not), and a new foreign policy where leaders look inward to domestic issues instead of policing the world (under the motto, “No New Wars.”)
Many things have happened since those election promises. There’s been a few assassination attempts, a strong likelihood of blackmail, and Trump’s most powerful donor class demanding more war.
All of those are likely connected. Without getting too far down the rabbit hole of conspiracy – there is an objective truth – the MAGA base was betrayed when Trump demonstrated even he could become part of a swamp of Washington war mongers.
Republican Thomas Massie reminding the base why they voted Trump.
The American president’s foreign policy actions has created a ground swell of criticism never heard in Republican circles. This includes once Trump loyalists Marjorie Taylor Green, Megyn Kelly Tucker Carlson, and Charlie Kirk in the months immediately before his assassination.
Many Americans who identify with an “America First” approach argue that endless overseas wars drain trillions in tax dollars and add to national debt while domestic priorities — infrastructure, healthcare, border security, and veterans’ care — remain strained.
They point to the costs of prolonged wars: higher federal spending and debt, risk to service members and their families, potential blowback that threatens U.S. security, and increased migration pressures stemming from destabilized regions.
These are concerns shared across the political spectrum – albeit with different motivations and desired outcomes. The American war hawks are facing scrutiny like never before from left, centre and right wing commentators.
Military Industrial Complex Opposes American Democracy
Every post-WWII president — including Trump — reflects the truth of Eisenhower’s warning about the growing power of the military-industrial complex. Institutional forces in Washington outlast, outmaneuver, and out power elected leaders.
Now, some of Trump’s most prominent supporters — particularly those with large platforms outside traditional media — are breaking a long-standing taboo by openly questioning Israel’s reliance on American financial, military, and political support.
Whether support for Israel has any strategic value isn’t allowable debate because it’s a debate that the military industrial complex cannot win and therefore cannot allow.
This has facilitated an enormous infringement on constitutional liberties.
Tucker Carlson, who has spoken for years without any criticism on the right, turned on Israel and asked all the obvious questions. All of a sudden there’s calls across the political spectrum for his cancellation.
This includes Tucker winning the 2025 StopAntisemitism award for anti-Semite of the Year. His crimes – speaking against unconditional support for Israel which he defines as unchristian.
Tucker defeated Ms. Rachel – social media child entertainer – whose crime is speaking up for children who are dying or being orphaned in record numbers because of Israeli indiscriminate killings and war crimes.
The reason for panic and chaos in power circles is clear. Americans are asking all the same questions. The unquestioning American-Israel alliance cannot sustain itself any longer.
Americans are wondering why they work three jobs, lack healthcare and income security but observe government fund a higher standard of living for Israelis.
Those same Americans are learning their voices cannot elect any real challenge to the modern American empire. The swamp has ruled for decades. Their hero Trump has been swallowed into that swamp.
Antiwar voices – no matter their political stripes – are always secondary to the power of the machinery of war – whether they supported Kennedy, Bush, Clinton, Obama or Trump.
American democracy is an illusion – and for the first time that has been exposed across every segment of American society.
To say the summer of 1994 had a dramatic impact on my world would be an understatement. I graduated high school and shortly afterwards began a relationship that would lead to marriage and children.
In June of 1994, I attended a graduation party that turned into a mass gathering of people around North America glued to the TV watching the same white Bronco drive the freeways of Los Angeles – towing a convoy of police.
Yet that wasn’t even the biggest thing that summer that was connecting people en mass.
The summer of 94’ marked huge worldwide technological advancements via the World Wide Web, as the internet continued its rapid growth in popularity and accessibility.
I can recall the giddiness using WebCrawler for a few minutes each week. I’d join a chat room in another city exotically named MonctonLocals or Edmonton4U.
Global Information and Travel
The internet shrank the world. Suddenly, distant countries were accessible beyond encyclopedias. I read foreign newspapers and learned about life far outside Canada.
But I learned even more from travelers I met at my first full-time jobs in retail—first at Sam the Cameraman, then at Black’s Photography.
I worked in the final days of mass 35mm film. Competing with Walmart and Superstore meant developing and printing the important vacation photos of some Winnipeg families.
Our policy required us to open every envelope and review each order to ensure quality. Those moments sparked conversations about far-off beaches, cities, and adventures.
Once, I handed a woman photos that clearly weren’t of her. One of many rolls of film highlighted her husband’s Hawaiian getaway featured a different woman.
She paid, furious, and left without sharing a single travel story. She likely hadn’t been on that trip.
Getting paid to glimpse at other people’s lives became my global education. Customers spoke casually about visiting 50 countries. Listening to them, I started building a bucket list of my own.
By New Year’s Eve 1996, I set a bold resolution: visit 30 countries in my lifetime. Back then, I imagined ticking them off on massive European bus tours—covering countless countries in weeks.
An Introduction to Mama Africa
I still remember my first Sunday shift alone at Black’s Photography. I was a bundle of nerves. The day before, a customer dropped off ten rolls of 35mm film due by 1 p.m., so I arrived more than two hours early to make sure I was ready.
Those rolls became one of the most vivid journeys of my earlier life. Frame by frame, I traveled through safari scenes with elephants and giraffes towering over a 4×4, then into the dense rainforests of Uganda on a chimpanzee trek.
When the customer returned, he eagerly shared the stories behind the images. He spoke of Uganda’s unpredictability, of Rwandan refugees, and of how the country became a base for the Rwandan Patriotic Front as exiled Tutsi returned home at the start of a civil war in the early 1990s.
Through his photos, I began to understand the deeper history behind April 7, 1994—the start of the Genocide against the Tutsi, which also claimed the lives of moderate Hutu.
The violence did not emerge in a vacuum. The Belgian’s may have colonized fewer places than the other European powers, but their treatment of the people of eastern Africa has been some of the worst atrocities of the last hundred plus years.
The apartheid discriminatory laws elevated the minority Tutsi over the Hutu majority through racialized pseudo-science and unequal legal systems.
What began as a nervous shift in a Winnipeg photo lab quietly opened a window into one of the most devastating chapters of modern history in some of the most beautiful countries of the world.
28, 29 & 30
Now that I’ve traveled alongside my kids and my partner on their journeys, I’m returning to where I’m at my best—solo on the road.
While my legs still carry me, I’m setting out again to finish the bucket list with the final three countries next month—Darwin willing.
While both of those were personal and meaningful, they pale in comparison to the most impactful office I have ever visited – specifically the small office of an assistant at the United Nations compound in Srebrenica, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Destruction of Muqata’a (Arafat’s compound / tomb).
Israel has maintained control over Ramallah since its occupation of the West Bank in 1967. The compound that housed Yasser Arafat was known as the Muqata’a.
In Arafat’s later years, particularly from 2002 to 2003, this control escalated from constant surveillance into a full military siege. During this period, Israeli forces repeatedly attacked the compound, destroying most of its buildings, forcing Arafat to live and work in makeshift rooms alongside his security personnel.
Operation Defensive Shield (March, 2002).
Arafat became ill in 2003 and was transported to Paris, France where he died the following year of a stroke. The underlying cause of that stroke remains disputed. In 2013, nine years after his death, his body was exhumed to determine if he was poisoned.
A Swiss forensic team found levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis 18 times higher than normal, and believed on a balance of probabilities that polonium poisoning had occurred. However, French and British medical professionals did not believe there was enough evidence for that conclusion.
Arafat’s death occurred less than a decade after winning the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated by an Israeli extremist for being seen as too generous to the Palestinians while negotiating peace.
The assassination of those who pursue moderate paths to peace must be included when criticizing the forms of Palestinian resistance.
Clockwise (taken in 2019): first Palestinian passport, Arafat’s tomb, Arafat’s final Palestinian bedroom.
Oskar Schindler’s Enamel Factory
Oskar Schindler is a figure who demonstrates why history cannot be assessed in simple black-and-white terms of absolute good versus absolute evil. It’s more appropriate to compare one’s actions against the society and time in which they took place.
A savvy businessman and a member of the Nazi Party, Schindler made decisions that both profited from genocide and, at the same time, shielded more than 1,000 Jewish employees from deportation to concentration and death camps.
A cynic might argue that he was merely a war profiteer who protected his workers out of self-interest rather than concern for their Jewish identity, but the hard reality is that his moral contradictions stand in stark contrast to countless other businessmen who profited under the same system without saving anyone at all.
Schindler’s factory: Hall of Reflection, Schindler’s original desk; Jewish employees and selfie in front of factory.
The original factory, now a museum tells the story of the Krakow Jewish community in a powerful way. The first walls of the museum showcase a vibrant summer for the Jewish community, in the heat of August 1939. Countless photos of people swimming, reading, being in love, and soaking up holidays in and around Krakow immediately humanize a typical community.
The innocent days of that summer quickly fade in the remainder of the museum which focuses on the lives destroyed after the Nazis invaded Poland a month later in September.
The Nazis forced Kraków’s Jewish families from their homes in huge numbers, relocating them to a ghetto near Schindler’s factory. The ghetto was eventually liquidated through deportations to concentration camps, including Auschwitz—except for the more than 1,000 Jewish workers Schindler protected until the end of the war.
Clockwise: Marshal Josef Pilsudski Bridge; Schindler’s List – Jews forced over bridge to ghetto; Kraków’s Old Synagogue (est. 1407); Birkenau death camp.Gravesite of Oskar Schindler – Jerusalem (2019)
Beware the Bureaucrat’s Desk
Failures of the United Nations
The horrors of the Holocaust—and more broadly the Second World War—produced what was meant to be history’s ultimate lesson. From as early as primary school, we were taught to say “Never Again,” in honour of the millions upon millions of Jewish Europeans, soldiers, and countless civilians killed. It was supposed to be a lesson to save future humanity.
That lesson led to the creation of international institutions, most notably the United Nations in 1945. The UN’s core mission was to prevent war, maintain peace and security, foster friendly relations among nations, solve global problems, and protect human rights.
Yet my teenage years would witness the United Nations fail spectacularly twice in consecutive years: first in Africa during the 1994 genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda, and then in Europe in 1995 with the genocide of Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In both cases, the UN had troops on the ground before, during, and after the genocide. In both cases, the UN stood by as thousands were slaughtered.
Those failures were largely the result of political and bureaucratic constraints placed on UN missions, rather than the conduct of peacekeeping personnel themselves—though the Dutch Supreme Court later ruled the Netherlands partially liable (approximately 10%) for the actions of Dutch troops who expelled around 350 Bosniaks from the Srebrenica compound, leading to their near-immediate deaths.
In both genocides, military commanders on the ground—Canadian in Rwanda and Dutch in Bosnia—repeatedly requested additional support and authorization to intervene, and were denied. Their mandates limited them to monitoring fragile peace agreements, not actively preventing violence.
These failures destroyed many lives including UN troops who’ve lived with post-traumatic health issues their entire lives.
The Town of Srebrenica, Bosnia
The road into Srebrenica — winds through green hills and tight valleys.
To reach the town you’re reminded of the horrors that happened. Serb Nationalist communities continue to commemorate men – some of which were found guilty of war crimes.
You then drive past the Kravica agricultural cooperative warehouse, where over 1,300 Bosniak men and boys were executed by grenade and those still moving by gun in July 1995.
Serb communities that facilitated the genocide. The warehouse used to hold and then execute
This all occurred following the collapse of the former Yugoslavia into ethnic, political, and military chaos.
Refusing to accept Bosnia and Herzegovina as a new sovereign state, Serbian Nationalists- who viewed Bosniaks (Muslims) as inferior remnants of Ottoman rule – led a campaign of ethnic cleansing to remove them from eastern Bosnia.
These Nationalists controlled much of the Yugoslav People’s Army’s equipment and infrastructure, and they immediately formed the Army of Republika Srpska with those resources.
The United Nations were present because of this. Srebrenica was designated as a UN “Safe Area.” This allowed international actors to appear engaged without committing to meaningful intervention.
Unsurprisingly, thousands of Bosniaks fled to the town to protect themselves and their families. Bosniaks entering the safe area were required to disarm.
This left a lightly defended town surrounded by a well-armed Serb force, enabling the systematic kidnapping and killing of over 8,000 men and boys with little resistance.
The United Nations Compound – Srebrenica
How could this have happened in the presence of the UN?
The peacekeeping mandate itself prohibited UN troops from using force except in their own self-defence, effectively preventing intervention.
Inside the UN compound is the operations room linking the base to the UN and NATO chain of command.
That room is left untouched. An IBM computer. A keyboard aligned carefully with the desk’s edge. Locked media drives. Behind it, maps pinned under plastic — borders preserved even when people were not.
This was the desk of an assistant. It was from this desk that Dutch Lieutenant-Colonel Thom Karremans sent communications begging for help and where he received official refusal to those requests.
Upon leaving the preserved UN offices, you are presented with the faces of some of the Bosnian women who lost all male members of their family – husbands, fathers, sons, uncles, friends.
And upon exiting the UN compound, I faced one of the largest gravesites I’ve ever seen. The resting place that houses the remains of those men and boys killed over a few days. The place where every year they find more bodies to add.
The majority of the western world is appropriately giving credit to Prime Minister Carney’s powerful speech.
Carney quoted Czech dissident Vaclav Havel and the reality that, “the system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.”
The description used was that of shop keepers making peace by having signs in their window promoting the system they lived in. The system falls apart once one shop keeper removes their sign.
Carney’s powerful speech has carried Canadian patriotism to a level I haven’t seen before. However, it demonstrates the privileged position Canada has had relative to other nations across the globe.
As Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian lieutenant-general, who has spent much of his life trying to come to terms with what he witnessed in Rwanda, says in his book, The Peace:
Many tried to attribute the Holocaust to some sort of collective insanity. The genocide convention arose out of shared horror at the enormity of what the Nazis had done. The mantra, “never again,” signified the world’s determination to prevent it from happening again. We have failed.
Cambodia, Burundi, Yugoslavia, Ethiopia, China and of course Rwanda drive that failure home.
Let’s be honest. The sign was never in the window for much of the world.
Prime Minister Carney’s recent speech is being rightly hailed across much of the Western world as the kind of honesty required if we are to collectively confront the reality of American empire.
It lands close to a story I’ve just finished working on and will share soon.
The speech forces the truth that many Canadians have always avoided: the “sign in the window” that convinced us there was a fair, rules‑based world order never actually existed for vast numbers of people subject to the constant wars of conquest inflicted on them by American greed.
For decades, Canada has been aligned with America’s proxy wars, regime change, sanctions, and resource extraction.
We told ourselves that the system worked because it appeared to work for us as allies of a country that is always at war – but never against us.
We just went along and pretended that people in another nation somehow deserved the use of power against innocent civilians to control their sovereignty.
Why is Canada noticing now? It’s obvious, we are finally in a position that most people around the world have always been in. We now must face the strength of a nation that wants to own the entire north – much of it in northern Canada.
It brings up Pastor Martin Niemöller’s post‑war poem, “First They Came.” Niemöller was not born as a hero. He was a German nationalist who initially supported Hitler and only recognized the danger of authoritarianism once it intruded on his own freedom—specifically when the Nazis moved to control the Protestant churches. He was arrested in 1937 for speaking out about church and state and spent years in concentration camps.
After the war, he reflected on his earlier silence with clarity:
First, they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me
This is the reason I believe in what Martin Luther King Jr. said along those same lines in his 1963, ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail:’
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
The American empire has always been a problem for world peace. It’s now on our doorstep.
I recently discovered that Kwedi Mzingisi Zilindile Mkhaliphi (Kwedi) of Bazian, South Africa passed away at the age of 90.
Embarrassingly, this knowledge came to me long after he’d passed in May of 2024.
Me with Kwedi in Durban, South Africa (2002).
The Revolutionary
Kwedi’s personal compass became political in his late teens. He was first arrested in 1952 for participating in the Defiance Campaign against South Africa’s racist, oppressive government.
The campaign involved mass civil disobedience inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. Kwedi deliberately broke apartheid laws (curfews, pass laws, segregated facilities). He was part of a movement that chose jail over fines to burden the state and gain platforms in court.
Kwedi left the African National Congress (ANC) to join the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), a splinter group with a more radical ideology.
While the ANC pursued a multi-racial, inclusive approach, the PAC emphasized Black consciousness and Africanism, seeing multi-racial alliances as a compromise to liberation.
He helped organize the mass protests that led to the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, when police killed 21 Africans peacefully protesting apartheid laws. Afterward, the government banned both the PAC and ANC, and many PAC members concluded that peaceful protest was ineffective.
I was so green and innocent that, once at lunch with Kwedi, I remarked on the injustice of him spending years in prison for peaceful resistance. He quickly and quietly corrected me, explaining that he often used explosives in his activities. I left it at that.
Kwedi belonged to Poqo, the PAC’s underground armed wing modeled on the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. It was there that he met his wife, Nontombi.
Poqo sought immediate, widespread violence to spark a general uprising, targeting people associated with apartheid, not just infrastructure.
Kwedi was arrested four times between 1962 and 1964 on charges including suspicion of communism, membership in a banned organization, and sabotage. His 1964 arrest for sabotage led to a year-long trial, resulting in a twenty-year sentence. He served this in Section B of Robben Island’s maximum-security prison, which housed prominent political leaders.
Political Prisoner
I didn’t discuss specifics with Kwedi often, but he shared a powerful story about solidarity in prison. A staunch activist, he clashed with moderate ANC members, including Mandela.
Yet, when he arrived at prison, he became a news source, and fellow inmates gathered around him to shield him from the warden’s eyes as the man providing outside news. Kwedi became accustomed to a growing solitary among past adversaries.
The quarry, where inmates did their hard labour was dubbed ‘The University.’ It was where Section B inmates bonded over politics, science, and math, bridging ideological gaps. Future leaders including Kwedi, Mandela, Sisulu, Mbeki, and Kathrada were among the ‘students.’
Clockwise: photo of Robben Island from a tourism brochure, photo of the prison and Nelson Mandela’s prison cell, that I took during a tour of the island on my birthday in 2001).
Kwedi was released in December of 1985, only to be rearrested and detained without charge so that he’d miss another Christmas with family. He finally reunited with them weeks later. Post-apartheid, he taught economics and later led the National Co-operative Association of South Africa (NCASA) as CEO.
Working with a National Hero
NCASA was a national organization that supported housing, health, and other worker cooperatives. I began an internship there in the late summer of 2001 and was later offered full-time employment, which I held until 2003.
Working with Kwedi came with its fair share of frustrations. As the Canadian on the ground, I often found myself juggling priorities that didn’t always align. I had to navigate the expectations of South African staff at NCASA, the leaders of the Canadian Co-operative Association who funded the organization, the Canadian High Commission, and the everyday members of NCASA who depended on its support.
Photos of Kwedi at NCASA (2001 to 2003)
Kwedi’s strength was his charm and his status as a national hero. Yet this often came into tension with staying focused on specific tasks. He would spend hours meeting and talking with countless admirers, which often led to long “to-do” lists filled with promises that didn’t always align with the office’s priorities or budget.
Looking back, however, those moments of frustration turned into some of the most memorable—and frankly wild—experiences of my time in South Africa, outlasting many other memories from that period.
Kwedi employed a man who assisted him in many ways—running errands, acting as his chauffeur, and sometimes serving as a bodyguard. When this man became ill for an extended period, Kwedi turned to me to help with driving.
Being a chauffeur was not my strongest skill. I was still learning to drive on the opposite side of the car and the road. I was asked to drive him from Pretoria in Gauteng Province to Twazi, a rural community in the Eastern Cape, to meet a local chief.
On the way, Kwedi had me stop in Soweto to pick up another person. He then frequently changed our route, asking me to leave the main highway and travel on dirt roads so he could check in on people he knew. What should have been an 11-hour drive ended up taking almost 16 hours.
In another situation, Kwedi asked me to drive him to a meeting of the Robben Island Museum Council, where he was appointed to serve. Once we arrived, I joined the other drivers in the waiting area. I was the only white person in the room, and I could sense some people felt uncomfortable or unsure how to interact. Trying to break the ice, I said, “I graduated at the top of my class at the University of Pretoria Chauffeur School.”
Months later, at another event, a man confronted me, saying he had looked into it—and, of course, there is no Pretoria Chauffeur School. I had to admit that my sense of humor doesn’t always land.
Finally, the day after I was mugged in Durban, Kwedi announced to a room of 200 people what had happened—and added, for the single women in the crowd, that they could make me feel better by talking to me, as I was looking for a bride. That comment became a running theme in nearly every conversation I had for months afterward.
When I heard of Kwedi’s passing, I immediately thought of so many memories from what was a formative period of my life. I feel fortunate to have experienced so many of those moments.
Kwedi was a freedom fighter who helped me with a path that expects equality regardless of religion, race, gender and ethnicity.
The rise of Donald Trump is often explained as an accident of history, a fluke powered by anger, social media, or foreign interference. But that story leaves out a far more uncomfortable truth: Trump’s ascent was enabled by deliberate, documented political strategy inside the American establishment.
This is not speculation. It is written plainly in internal campaign documents and emails released through WikiLeaks during the 2016 election.
Elevate the Pied Pipers
In 2015, Hillary Clinton’s campaign identified a group of Republican candidates it viewed as strategically useful. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Ben Carson were described internally as “pied piper” candidates — figures whose extremism, the campaign believed, would make them easier to defeat in a general election.
The strategy was simple and cynical: encourage media attention toward the most polarizing Republican voices while more traditional candidates were sidelined. Corporate media obliged, providing Trump with billions of dollars in free coverage, often airing rallies live and treating spectacle as substance.
The assumption was that the American public would ultimately reject these candidates once faced with a binary choice. That assumption proved disastrously wrong.
Clinton’s campaign did not control Republican voters, but it did knowingly gamble that elevating an authoritarian-leaning figure posed no real risk. That gamble failed.
Neutralizing Bernie
At the same time, Clinton faced a different challenge — one from within her own party.
Bernie Sanders consistently polled better against Republican candidates, including Trump, than Clinton did throughout the primary season. His campaign energized younger voters, independents, and working-class Americans who had largely disengaged from Democratic politics.
Before a single primary vote was cast, Clinton signed a Joint Fundraising Agreement with the Democratic National Committee. This agreement gave her effective control over party finances, staffing decisions, and strategic planning.
Subsequent leaked emails revealed DNC officials openly favoring Clinton and discussing ways to undermine Sanders’ campaign. Former DNC chair Donna Brazile later acknowledged that the process was unfair and structurally tilted toward Clinton.
None of this was illegal. But it was profoundly undemocratic.
The Democratic Party did not simply back its preferred candidate — it intervened to ensure the outcome.
House of Mirrors
After Trump’s victory, attention quickly shifted to Russia-Gate. Russian interference in the election immediately helped in deflecting scrutiny away from the Democratic Party’s own email scandal.
The Mueller investigation did not establish a criminal conspiracy between Trump and Russia. Yet the fixation on foreign interference allowed party leadership to avoid confronting an uncomfortable reality — that voter suppression within the party, media manipulation, and strategic arrogance played a decisive role in the loss.
Millions of voters who had been energized by Sanders were left disillusioned. Many stayed home. Some voted third party. Others disengaged entirely.
The result was not just an electoral defeat, but a deeper erosion of trust in democratic institutions.
The Democratic Party’s Continuous Loop of Anti-democratic Politics.
I’ve written recently about Zohran MamdaniTrue Colours . The party brass continue to ensure the wishes of party members and the American public are tightly controlled.
This was evident when party elite forced Biden out in favour of Kamala Harris. For the first time since 1968, the Democratic nominee won the nomination without winning a single primary vote. In fact there were a dozen other candidates that had votes in previous primaries forcing Harris out of the race quite early.
After being anointed as the party’s presidential nominee, Harris attempted to walk a narrowing tightrope: reassuring the Democratic Party’s pro-war donors and power brokers while still needing the votes of millions of disillusioned young people deeply alarmed by her position on Palestine. To manage that contradiction, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was repeatedly deployed as a surrogate, assuring audiences that Harris and Biden were “working tirelessly, around the clock” to secure a ceasefire—language that functioned more as political insulation than as a reflection of meaningful leverage or results.
Months after her defeat – officials in Israel and the United States advised that real pressure for a ceasefire came from the new Trump Administration noting that Biden or Harris were silent behind the scenes. Millions of progressive voters have forever lost trust in the so called most progressive voices.
Taking Accountability
Trump did not emerge in a vacuum. He was not an inevitable force of nature. His rise was enabled by a political culture that prioritized control over participation and strategy over principle.
Elevating extremism for short-term advantage and suppressing popular movements for long-term dominance proved to be a catastrophic miscalculation.
The lesson of past years is that the American public wants change. MAGA was the more popular option for that change – largely due to the Democratic Party refusing to offer anything of value to voters.
That the Democrats keep rolling out the establishment (Clinton, Harris) demonstrates a Party out of touch with progressive populism. We’re left with a Republican-lite party that isn’t as offensive to our sensibilities- but offers little competition by way of policy or values.
Ben Carr is my Liberal Member of Parliament for Winnipeg South Centre, elected in a 2023 by-election following the death of his father, longtime MP Jim Carr.
If it weren’t for Palestine, I would likely align with Ben on many issues—or at least accept our disagreements as part of democratic life.
But Palestine is not a peripheral issue. Ben’s support for Zionism places him on the side of an ideology that enshrines ethnic supremacy in law. Under the banner of a “right to a Jewish state,” non-Jewish Palestinians—Muslim and Christian families with centuries-long ties to the land—are subjected to legal inequality (apartheid), indefinite incarceration without charge, land theft, state violence, starvation and death.
This is not a policy disagreement I can set aside. It is a moral line.
The federal government is responsible for Canada’s foreign affairs. This has placed Carr at the crossroads. Would he stand up for Canadian values of peace and rule of law? Would he continue to support Israel at all costs?
He has chosen Israel time and again. Most notably being one of only three Liberal MPs who voted against a ceasefire in Gaza.
More recently Ben Carr has publicly supported so-called “bubble” or buffer-zone legislation, backing measures that restrict protests and demonstrations within designated distances of schools, religious institutions, and community spaces.
Under such legislation, Canadian Charter rights would be curtailed in deeply troubling ways.
Indigenous peoples could be barred from protesting at Catholic churches over the legacy of residential schools.
Canadians could be prevented from demonstrating opposition to a Jewish community centre hosting individuals accused of war crimes, or a synagogue holding an auction of land recently taken from Palestinians.
In practice, the legislation risks shielding individuals and institutions from accountability by restricting peaceful protest precisely where it is most meaningful.
I made a series of videos earlier this year called, The Palestine Minutes. This is a video comparing Carr’s simultaneous policy positions on horses and Palestinians.
Lamont Hill and Plitnick’s book title is a perfect description of the phenomenon where so called progressives hold ideals…except in Palestine.
Raoul Peck’s 2025 Documentary on the life, times and importance of George Orwell for current society.
Motihari — a small Indian city — is where Gandhi launched his first Satyagraha, and it’s also the birthplace of George Orwell (born Eric Arthur Blair), whose father served in the British Opium Department.
The town that ignited non-violent resistance against the British empire also produced a writer who grew up directly benefiting from colonialism, yet later cited that as a reason he became one of its fiercest critics.
Raoul Peck — best known for his 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary I Am Not Your Negro, a searing social critique built around the writings of civil rights activist James Baldwin — returns with a similar treatment for the life of George Orwell, the writer whose work became the voice of Antifa (anti-fascism) throughout the later half of the 20th century.
Actor Damian Lewis (best known for the lead role in Homeland and Billions) plays Orwell by narrating his diary in the last years of his life while he was battling tuberculosis and writing 1984 – his final novel.
Orwell’s Antifa credentials run deep. He voluntarily served in an international brigade, joining the Workers Party during the Spanish Civil War. That war highlighted a growing fascism across the western world that included Italy and Germany. That war was also a catalyst for his untimely death at age 46. Orwell sustained a bullet to the neck – an injury that is suspected to have led to contracting tuberculosis which eventually led to his passing.
George Orwell (back row – 4th from left) violated the British Foreign Enlistment Act by fighting in the Spanish Civil War (1937).
Orwell considered himself a democratic socialist. That ideology allowed him to critique all totalitarian systems of government. Animal Farm – arguably his best work – was a critique of Soviet society and communism.
The documentary is haunting in the way it applies the themes of 1984 to the landscape of modern day geopolitics. The phrase, “Make Orwell Fiction Again” is part of modern discourse – however, history demonstrates that Orwellian concepts of totalitarian rule invoke three paradoxes that have always existed and continue to this day to different degrees.
War is Peace
This paradoxical slogan is designed to keep citizens obedient through the machinery of endless conflict. Hatred and fear that might otherwise be directed at the ruling elite are instead redirected toward a permanent external enemy — an enemy that conveniently justifies surveillance, repression, and unquestioning loyalty.
In 1984, the three superstates — Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia — are locked in a perpetual war that may or may not even be real. Winston, working inside Oceania’s propaganda apparatus, begins to doubt whether these rival powers exist in the way the state describes them. His daily job for Big Brother is to rewrite newspapers, speeches, and records so that yesterday’s enemy becomes today’s ally, and today’s manufactured threat becomes tomorrow’s unquestionable truth.
This War is Peace slogan could just as easily describe the modern era of conflict — wars launched on “pre-emptive” grounds where one country pulverizes another without any real provocation.
The United States is almost never at peace. In nearly 250 years since 1776, Americans have experienced only about fifteen years without a war. Fear has become a defining political tool — a constant narrative that some foreign power is lurking, rising, plotting, or preparing to strike.
To neutralize these ever-shifting threats, the public is asked — again and again — to buy into another “necessary” conflict. A new forever war. A new enemy. A new justification for military expansion, surveillance, and the suspension of skepticism.
The U.S. invasion of Iraq is the clearest example. The killing of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians was sold to the West as the price of keeping the world “safe.” It’s no coincidence this happened in the shadow of 9/11, when American war hawks seized the moment to pursue regime change and gain more favourable access to Iraq’s natural resources. They could easily manufacture all Muslims as a threat. That perception continues today as a factor in growing racism and hatred.
The threat was always fictional. Iraq had no capacity to harm the United States, no weapons of mass destruction, and no link to the perpetrators of 9/11. The narrative was a farce — but it worked. America waging that war was sold as necessary for peace.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine follows a familiar pattern. In one interview, a Russian civilian calmly explained he supports the war because he believes Ukraine is packed with Nazis preparing to invade Russia — a fear deliberately stoked by state propaganda, echoing Soviet memories of the Second World War.
And so the cycle repeats: war waged in the name of “peace,” fear weaponized to justify aggression, and entire nations convinced that security comes from destroying someone else’s.
Invasion of Iraq – 2003
Freedom is Slavery
This second paradox shows how totalitarian systems manipulate language so completely that people mistake obedience for liberty. In his words, “political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.”
The documentary drives this home through countless examples, but none more powerfully than the reinvention of the term antisemitism.
A word that once existed to shield Jewish people from discrimination has been stretched into a political weapon — used not to protect a vulnerable population, but to shield one of the most powerful militaries on earth from criticism.
Jay’s private screening room
In this reframing, Israel becomes the perpetual victim, even as a state that, since 1967, has controlled, bombarded, imprisoned, starved, and segregated the very population it occupies. When the world protests these realities, the facts are blurred, and the language of dissent is criminalized. Thousands across the so-called “free world” have been suspended, fired, smeared, or even arrested for nothing more than political speech.
One of the clearest examples of how the term’s meaning has been distorted came during Trump’s inauguration, when Elon Musk repeatedly raised his arm in what visibly resembled a Nazi salute. The Anti-Defamation League shrugged it off as merely “an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm” and urged everyone to “give one another a bit of grace.”
It was a stunningly gentle interpretation of a gesture tied to the murder of six million Jews.
Elon Musk saluting his Fuhrer Trump?
Contrast that with the same organization’s stance toward campus protesters:
“I would like to see the FBI investigate these groups for their espousal and elevation of Hamas propaganda… It’s about time law enforcement apply consequences.”
Most of those students never voiced support for Hamas. They criticized state violence, occupation, and apartheid — yet their words were flattened into “terrorist sympathizing.” Their political opinions were rewritten as criminal intent.
This is Orwell’s warning made real: language twisted so tightly that the powerful are recast as the persecuted, dissent becomes extremism, and the right to speak becomes a punishable offence.
Ignorance is Strength
The final paradox shows how a population’s ignorance becomes the government’s greatest strength. When people accept what they’re told without questioning, analyzing, or thinking critically, their loyalty becomes automatic. Blind. Predictable.
You can see this pattern repeating in the current push to frame Venezuela as the next enemy.
For decades, this South American nation has lived in the crosshairs of U.S. foreign policy — not because of humanitarian concerns or democratic ideals, but because it sits on one of the largest oil reserves on the planet.
Clockwise: Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro, Flag of Venezuela, US State Department propaganda, USS Gerald R Ford – 1 of 3 navy vessels surrounding Venezuela
Now, the public is being primed for another “necessary” confrontation. The sales pitch? That Venezuela is responsible for flooding America with dangerous drugs. Every ship near the Venezuelan coast is suddenly branded a “narco-terrorist” vessel — a label that magically aligns with military escalation and the bombing of those ships.
But this is a rewriting of reality.
It contradicts the CIA’s own assessments, which do not list Venezuela as a major player in the drug trade. If stopping narcotics were truly the objective, U.S. bombs would fall on Mexico and Colombia — the actual hubs of production and trafficking. Instead, the narrative is bent to serve strategic interests, not public safety.
This is the power of engineered ignorance: a population taught to fear invented enemies will cheer for wars that have nothing to do with the reasons they’ve been given.
Conclusions :
Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 is a powerful reminder of how a state can quietly erode the pillars of democracy through the manipulation of its own citizens. The film traces Orwell’s life almost in real time — from his childhood to his final days — while his diary entries frame the emotional and political spine of the story.
Between chapters, the viewer watches a haunting animation set inside Orwell’s lungs, bacteria multiplying as his tuberculosis worsens. It’s an unsettling but brilliant device that shows the body betraying him at the very moment his mind is fighting hardest to warn the world.
The documentary makes clear that Orwell wasn’t writing from abstraction or theory. His lifelong encounters with tyranny — in colonial Burma, in the Spanish Civil War, in the rise of fascism and Stalinism — shaped his fierce commitment to exposing lies, propaganda, and state power run amok.
That he travelled to the remote Scottish island of Jura to finish 1984, fully aware he was nearing death, feels almost mythic. It was a final act of clarity and defiance: to leave behind a warning sharp enough to survive him.
This is a must-watch for anyone who worries, even a little, that the world is drifting toward the very dangers Orwell laid out. He didn’t live to see how prophetic he was — but he must have died knowing he had done everything he could to sound the alarm.
Short Solo 