Actually, what I quoted from the "HOTEL RWANDA: ..." article to illustrate why I believe that the first two paragraphs of the CPD article is propaganda, false en masse, well, I hadn't quoted the right paragraphs, or should have included the other ones, which I'll quote now.

I'll quote these others now, but while still and recommending full reading of both articles, this one and the interview one.

Quote: "...

The hotel was not under a state of siege early on as the movie suggests .... ...

General Bizimungu appears in the very first scenes of the film, prior to the double presidential assassination: yet when the plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, General Bizimungu was still a Colonel, and he was far from Kigali. According to one hotel guest, who remains unnamed for fear of retribution, Paul Rusesabagina, the film's hero, in no way wielded the kind of influence as depicted throughout the film:

"Paul was a very simple man like me in front of the Interahamwe. If he succeeded to save some Tutsi from his home he was most probably helped by some influential Interahamwe friend, say Georges Rutaganda. He was as vulnerable as I was and could not oppose any action against the will of the militia and much less of the army. He lies when he feints to call General Bizimungu for help, because the Hotel des Mille Collines was under the jurisdiction of Colonel Renzaho. Bizimungu lived at the northern war front lines, and he only came to Kigali four days after the plane was shot down and I never saw him at the hotel." [34]

"There is overwhelming evidence," wrote Rutigita Macumu appeared in an opinion piece titled "Paul Rusesabagina Not a Hero!" in Rwanda's The New Times state-owned newspaper on November 5, 2005, "that Paul Rusesabagina did not particularly go out of his way to bring the people, who were being hunted, to the Mille Collines Hotel haven, to protect them once they were in the hotel, to procure them food or even water when they were unable to pay for them, or to devise any uncommon means to fend off the killer gangs outside the hotel. It is highly apparent that he only fulfilled his duty, as directed by his Sabena bosses, to run the hotel well and cater for all its occupants." [35]

Georges Rutaganda, the devil beer salesman and erstwhile murderer of Tutsis in Hotel Rwanda, writes that Paul Rusesabagina was no disinterested, apolitical hotel manager, but an important activist member of a national political party. On 12 April 1994, Rusesabagina shifted to the Hôtel des Mille Collines where he acted as its new director because the other had been evacuated by foreign troops.

Hotel Rwanda depicts Rusesabagina at the Hotel des Mille Collines prior to the double presidential assassinations of 6 April 2004. Rutaganda claims to have visited the hotel and seen guests from both Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups, including: Rubangura Vedaste; Mutalikanwa Félicien; Dr. Gasasira Jean Baptiste; Kamana Claver; Kajuga Wicklif; Rwigema Celestin; Kamilindi Thomas; and others.

Rutaganda claims that very few UNAMIR soldiers were around, and they were incidental to security: the Hutu Gendarmes of the FAR army were manning a roadblock at the main entrance. He also claims that the "refugees" in the UN convoy that were turned back at a roadblock "were the real elite cream of Tutsi ethnic tribe. Had one been really spurred by bad intentions this would have been a great occasion to decapitate the Tutsi ethnic group. Families of former ministers, of doctors, of lawyers, of big business men, of highly educated men, of professors, etc, were among them."

If the 'genocide' were so organized and calculated, and quick to strike, then Rutaganda has a very interesting point: how did it happen that the elite of the Tutsi tribe were protected and evacuated by UNAMIR troops and Hutu Gendarmes? Of course, all Hutus are killers, and no one will believe a genocidaire: Georges Rutaganda was sentenced to life in prison by the ICTR.

Can George Rutaganda's claims be corroborated?

"Georges Rutaganda cooperated with the UN to save all those people." ICTR investigator Phil Taylor offers a compelling portrait of the supposed devil himself: Rutaganda didn't incite hate crimes, he called for calm and respect for the Red Cross; Rutaganda was never accused of the rape and sexual slavery depicted in the film; and Rutaganda never traded in machetes. Indeed, Human Rights Watch in January 1994 identified an English businessman who had imported tens of thousands of machetes into Rwanda. [36]

And rape was off the agenda at the ICTR until Hillary Clinton showed up in Arusha and pledged $600,000 to be paid after the first ICTR rape conviction: that's when they decided to pin rape on Georges Rutaganda, and that's where the Tutsi women collected in the fictitious Rutaganda compound in Hotel Rwanda come from.

..."

That's quoting ... plenty, but the whole article is very important, excellent, and plenty more than what I've quoted from it.

And it's the kind of reporting that I really appreciate; [very] [informative], educational.

I agree with what redjeff posted, but am otherwise commenting on the article in the rest of this post.

The first two paragraphs of the article are strong bs propaganda, AGAIN. And I'm not sure about all of the rest of the article, but believe some of the rest is also propaganda, lies, disinfo., misinfo'd reporter, and so on. I believe that a much better resource on the topic, and among other resource people, is Keith Harmon snow.

"HOTEL RWANDA:
Hollywood and the Holocaust in Central Africa",
by Keith Harmon Snow, allthingspass.com, Oct, 16, 2005, originally July 1, 2005 at Snow's site

For the copy at GR, simply see the author's subindex, www.globalresearch.ca .

But better is the copy at Snow's own website, I think; for I just learned through the Web search to get these article titles again that the original copy at his website has been since updated or revised, the last time having been Jan. 10, 2006.

http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=47

For people visiting the latter page, it's an index, so just scroll down a little for the link to the article. It's the second article linked in the page, based on having just checked it. And I definitely recommend reading it.

Quoting from the latter, a little:

"...

Some facts in the film are true. To begin with, in every sense of the terms "human rights" and "humanitarianism," the western powers betrayed the people of Rwanda. The whites were rapidly evacuated, the blacks abandoned, including the many African staffers of international agencies. The French armed the Hutu side, and they evacuated key Hutu elite at the first opportunity, but the United States, U.K. and Belgium armed the Tutsis. There was a Rwandan man named Paul Rusesabagina and he would, one day, be working at the Hotel des Mille Collines, but he was the manager of the Hotel des Diplomats. The Tutsi rebels were blamed with the assassination of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, but the film convinces us they didn't do it, when everything suggests they did. And it is certainly true that hundreds of thousands of Rwandans died.

Hotel Rwanda is a work of fiction. As a cultural artifact produced by an affluent entertainment industry in the West, and for affluent western consumers, but focused on a distant and exoticized culture about which the affluent western consumers know very little, or nothing at all, it serves to consolidate the ideological pillars of disinformation that came before it, and upon which it was built.

..."

Snow explains very elaborately, and the following article is for an interview he did with Paul Rusesabagina.

"The Grinding Machine: Terror and Genocide in Rwanda.
Keith Harmon Snow talks with Paul Rusesabagina, the ordinary man who inspired the film Hotel Rwanda",
by Keith Harmon Snow, towardfreedom.com, April 27, 2007,

www.globalresearch.ca

That, the searching just taught me, was originally posted April 20th at Snow's website, and the link for the article there is one up from the link on 'Hotel Rwanda: ...' in the above index page at his website (AllThingsPass). Iow, it's the first article linked in the ATP index or subindex page.

But I recommend, for readers wanting the pictures, including the one of Paul Rusesabagina, to use the TowardFreedom.com copy of the article, for neither of the copies at GR and at Snow's website have the pictures. And the TF link is in Snow's above index or subindex page, along with the link for the copy of the article at his own website; and another for a PDF download or copy.

I additionally recommend reading the Toward Freedom copy because it provides a link to a related commentary by Robin Lloyd, who is the publisher of Toward Freedom. I haven't read anything else of what he's written, but just read over some of his commentary, and I think it likely should be also read. It's never bad to get different and independent peoples' views; it sure can make life a little more frustrating, but Lloyd's commentary seems fine with respect to Snow's article, the only negative being that Lloyd believes Snow exaggerated a little at the very beginning of his article for the interview.

Quote: "I was in Rwanda earlier this year, and I think that Keith Harmon Snow is overstating the case when he says that Rwanda is a 'cauldron of terror' in his introduction to the Paul Rusesabagina interview published on this website recently.

As Snow states, and many writers agree, Rwandan President Paul Kagame has sponsored politically motivated assassinations and caused the growth of a significant domestic and foreign-based opposition including defectors from the organization he founded, the Rwandan Patriotic Front. I would agree that, given the nature of power and history, there is no doubt that President Kagame's reputation amongst the global elite as a "new generation of African leader who would accomplish the goals of the 'African Renaissance'" is overblown to say the least. Despite this, it seems to me that the Kagame government has managed to lead a period of relative peace, stability and reconstruction in post-genocide Rwanda. (I think of it as a double-genocide).

...

For example, three recent articles in the Kigali New Times stress poverty eradication:

...

Maybe all this is whistling in the wind. Underneath these front page stories are short notices on inside pages that describe murders of retaliation and revenge. As I mention in the article above, 167 witnesses to the violence of 1994 have been murdered since 2001. As we know that Kagame is supported by the US in its effort to shoulder France out of Central Africa, I think it is important for more US activists to pay attention to developments there. Clearly, forces promoting violence are still at play there."

The above article he's speaking of in the last quoted paragraph appears just above the commentary specifically on Snow's article for the interview, that is, is not part of the latter commentary, though does seem to be related (not having read it, only having noticed that it is about Rwanda, although also Congo and other African countries).

I found it to be an excellent interview and Paul Rusesabagina, from what I recall of the interview anyway, seemed very fair and honest. What or some of what the Cleveland Plain Dealer article says of what he says seems okay; unless he told the CPD reporter that he saved many, many peoples lives, etc. If he has now changed his story in that manner, then I'll stick with what Keith Harmon Snow provides, in both of the above articles by him.

I won't bother reading the CPD article with great seriousness though; but it does strike me as bearing some propaganda, if it's not mostly that.

Snow has plenty of other articles specifically enough about what happened in Rwanda, including since 1994, as well as stating more or repeating parts in articles specifically about other and nearby African countries, given the conflict relevances.

And there are articles by some other authors with articles at GR, only needing to check the sub-saharan Africa subindex.

There surely is a section at ZNet or ZMag, and other websites, but I don't know which are the very best, most accurate, and very rarely find people providing links to good resources on African contexts.

It looks like after all the horrors Rwanda went through, nothing has really changed. It's sad to realize Mr. Rusesabagina may be right that the killing may happen again. If the fundamental relationship between Tutsis and Hutus doesn't change, the current calm is only an illusion.

Let no good deed remain unpunished.

Wow, did someone figure out that Hollywood will often change a story to make a better movie?

Yes, COMarc, somebody figured out that Hollywood will often change a story to make a better movie. I did, but when I saw the film, I didn't mistake it for a documentary. Apparently, Elizabeth Sullivan did.

To Mike Corbeil: yes, this article may be propaganda, but the www.globalresearch.ca website you recommend to those who want truth about Hotel Rwanda and Paul Rusesabagina is an ultra-leftist, neo-communist mental asylum with zero credibility at all. If you have better sources, please share them.