Christopher Black – The Video

His life, work, and our relationship

The video of this post is here.

In these oral history posts, I will pause to focus on various topics and people that I encountered during my journey. This one will be on Christopher Black. The last email that I got from Ed Herman introduced me to one of his circles, and Chris was in it. That email from Ed led to my relationships with Chris and Sam Husseini.

I published my first draft of Ed’s bio a week before he died. I informed that group on Ed’s last email to me about Ed’s death. I had already known who Chris and Sam were. In the wake of Ed’s death, Sam was heroically getting Ed’s obituary published in mainstream venues such as the New York Times and Washington Post.

In 2000, I read an article that Chris had coauthored with Ed on the kangaroo court that had been set up for Yugoslavia, where Slobodan Milosevic died. But I really got to know who Chris was a lot better through Ed and David Peterson’s writings on Rwanda.

When I learned of Ed’s death, I informed that group that I had been working on Ed’s biography, and Chris immediately read my chapter draft on Rwanda and praised it. That began my friendship with Chris. It was my first indication that I was doing justice to Ed’s life. There was likely no higher authority on Earth on that Rwanda chapter than Chris. In the wake of Ed’s death and my budding relationship with Chris, I learned all about Chris that I could. Ed’s friends were no slouches, especially Chris.

Chris was born in England but was raised in Canada and became an attorney to avoid the blue-collar life that his father led. Chris became a criminal-defense attorney and was radicalized by NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.

Among the left, Chris was one of the few who did not shy away from conspiracies. When the New York Times made “errors” in Ed’s obituary, Chris informed me that it was no mistake, but it was intentional.

I recently wrote about how my legal fund secured the leading Constitutionalist attorney in the USA, but that guy was still in it for the money. Chris was the first attorney that I encountered who wasn’t. Chris was far more than an attorney. He was a musician (guitar), poet, and author.

Chris and I developed a lively correspondence after Ed’s death. Chris admitted that he was also deceived by Amnesty International before he figured out its game. He noted that discovering the deceptions coming from organizations such as Amnesty were part of the awakening process.

Chris knew that I was working on fixing Ed’s Wikipedia bio, and Chris was quite angry with that bio. Ed did not have a stauncher friend than Chris. Chris read my bio of Ed, and he was appreciative of how I covered Ed’s early days as a radical author.

Early on, I learned of Chris’s efforts in leading Milosevic’s defense team (the kangaroo court forbade Chris from defending Milosevic in the courtroom), and Chris informed me that taking his big case in Rwanda, where he miraculously won an acquittal in the kangaroo court, nearly killed him. He got malaria in Africa, the case wrecked his marriage, the CIA threatened his life, and he got on Kagame’s hit list (he was far from alone). Chris had me read his closing argument at the trial of the Rwandan general that he defended.

Chris was also hip to aspects of the medical racket. He had a girlfriend in Africa who he watched die of tuberculosis because the doctors would not treat her, as tuberculosis was one of many diseases called AIDS during that fraudulent time of medical colonialism that has yet to end.

Chris met Milosevic after his arrest in 2001. Soon after 9/11, he asked Milosevic what he thought about it, and Milosevic expressed his skepticism that Osama Bin Laden was the mastermind, as Bill Clinton protected him only two years earlier. Chris was in Africa when 9/11 happened, and he was at a hotel with a global clientele. After watching the TV coverage of the 9/11 attacks for less than an hour, a European announced that it was an inside job, and the people in the room agreed with him.

Ed wrote that Milosevic’s death was criminal negligence, as that kangaroo court denied him treatment for his heart condition. Chris thought that Milosevic’s charge that he was poisoned had autopsy evidence in support of that. Chris thought that Milosevic gave an unexpectedly strong defense, and that tribunal was not above murdering its targets, as several people had died in its custody.

Chris informed me that he had a dinner with Ed and David Peterson, telling them about what was happening in Rwanda, and that spurred Ed into the last great writing project of his life. In the introduction to Like a Cuttlefish Spurting out Ink, Peterson specifically thanked Chris. Chris was highly impressed by Ed and David’s courage in taking on the Rwanda propaganda.

In 2019, soon after Chris coauthored a book on the Hague tribunal on Yugoslavia and the Srebrenica massacre, his Wikipedia bio was deleted. Chris thought that it might have been related, but I think that people like Chris were always at risk of having their Wikipedia bios deleted. On my list of things to do was improving his Wikispooks biography.

In 2020, I published an essay on the Propaganda Model and Wikipedia, and my misadventures in trying to fix Ed’s Wikipedia bio. Chris raved about it, and once more expressed his anger at how Wikipedia smeared Ed. Chris was one of the biggest fans of my work on Ed, which meant a lot to me. The year before he died, Chris spoke at a conference in Serbia, and he informed me that Ed was a revered figure among Serbian and Russian scholars.

In his life’s last year, Chris had me read a tome on the Lincoln assassination, which argued that Lincoln’s secretary of war may have been involved. Even the author thought that the evidence was inconclusive, but Chris was onboard with the idea that the CIA took out JFK, from his reading on the ZR/Rifle project. Chris also wondered if Franklin Roosevelt died of natural causes (there is a book on that). At least, Chris was right about the CIA’s involvement in JFK’s murder, although the full story will never be known. I think that Chris deserved credit for at least entertaining those conspiratorial ideas.

All that I am sure of is that Oswald did not do it, and the rest is more uncertain, but far more than meets the eye for events such as 9/11.

The year before he died, I wrote a brief bio on Chris and sought his feedback before I published it. He sat on it for months, busy with other tasks and dealing with his health. After I asked him again about it, Chris gave it his OK. His life was obviously far more than a two-page article at Substack, and he said that if he tried to expand it, it might wander a bit. I informed Chris more than once that I wanted to help write a good biography on him. His death may have dashed that dream.

Not long before he died, Chris had cataract surgery. It went well at first, but then he got complications that damaged his vision. Chris died of a stroke last year, and I have to wonder whether the rigors of his life shortened it, such as his malaria.

As with Ed, Chris and I only exchanged email, but I considered him a good friend and I miss him. I wish that we could have met in the flesh, but the stars did not align for that. Chris was a great man, and it was an honor to interact with him. Chris did not believe in an afterlife, but he has realized his folly by now, and we will catch up one day.