[2009 Jan] Ben Affleck,
Rwanda, and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe by Keith Harmon Snow (Part 2)
But Rwanda pimps its sanitized image through numerous celebrities. In 2007,
actress Natalie Portman joined other global celebrities to name baby
mountain gorillas for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Virunga National Park;
actress Daryl Hannah has also played that role. Actress Sigourney Weaver is
officially tied to the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. William Taliaferro Close, the
father of actress Glen Close was for many years the personal physician for
Zaire’s president Joseph Mobutu. Ewan McGregor also boosts Rwanda’s image by
traveling there in league with the regime.
The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Jane Goodall Institute are
two big profit-based ‘conservation’ NGOs directly tied to militias involved in
extortion, land theft and other organized crime in North Kivu province. Jane
Goodall is currently a United Nations Messenger of Peace but she is so busy
giving “Save the Chimp” lectures worldwide that she doesn’t know what she is
talking about, and is blind to the crimes that the Jane Goodall Institute is
committing, in her name, in Congo.
A number of other big international names, including Quincy
Jones, and the CEOs of Starbucks, Microsoft, Google and CISCO, have previously
visited Rwanda on business missions. Kagame’s strategy of surrounding himself
with big business to shield his regime against criticisms or indictments for war
crimes and acts of genocide has paid off. Big business leaders, business web
sites and public relations campaigns the world over describe Paul Kagame as ‘The
Entrepreneur President.’
